Just a catchup

Hi Frankie. Thinking about you lately. It is that time of year. Betty had a party for Ray yesterday. Chris, Charlie, Celeste, Will and someone you do not know, my daughter inlaw Rachel, all made the trip. While the party in the evening was a surprise, the visiting family did what they always do and converged on Ray, swimming in his pool, sunning on his pier and riding in his boat. The pictures I saw looked like fun. But enough of present day, this note is about history, April 15 and you. On April 15, 1865, Lincoln died of his wounds from the night before. Half a century or so later, on April 15, the Titanic sunk from its wounds from the night before. Over a century later we can only guess what will happen today from last nights wounds. I was not at Rays party. Then in 1964, about half a century or so after the Titanic sank, you were born. The seventh. The youngest for another two and a half years, the smallest for much longer. You had a wonderful view of the world as a munchkin. I thinking today of you standing next to Dad, by the master bathroom in the morning while Dad shaved and discussing anything and prefacing your comments with; "Dad, I remmeber when I was a man". I think you always got a dap of shaving cream and a bladeless razor as a reward. When we moved to West Nyack, you were playing football in the front yard as the moving men unloaded the moving van. A very big African American man, stopped and looked for a moment and laughed and told me you were wonderful to watch, with such moves and confidence. No one counld catch you. You held on to that attribute your whole life. Always able to laugh, especially at yourself, conversant in many topics, expert in some (I am thinking sports), you made simple conversation enjoyable and interesting, and usually entertaining. And, you and Julie were wonderful hosts. An attribute I took advantage of often enough on my pilgramages to Rockland County to visit "home". Frankie, Frankie Doodle, Fredo, Rooster et.al., I am thinking of and missing you today. A bit more than most days. Happy Birthday. Love Bill

An Empty Weekend

Friday night: At the end of a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride home on Friday nights, Santa and Spaulding would pick me up at the Kuldiga bus station. The little old Honda CRV would be parked in the Rimi supermarket parking lot across the street from the bus station and as the bus went by the parking lot heading into the station I would get a profile view of the car with Santa in the front seat or not (sometimes she would shop whole waiting), and always Spaulding’s figure in the back seat. He would look big in comparison to the car, which was orange, only slightly lighter than his red color. As I would approach the car he would get in between the two from seats standing on the consul and excitedly lick my face and give me a welcome that repaired the burden of any travels (and on occasion the Latvian bus system will provide you burdens). I would never get close to a hello kiss from Santa because Spaulding would not vacate that middle spot until we were well on our way out of town. The back-left window would be his next destination on that ride, but only after coaxing him to it a few times. When we arrive home, he would plant himself under my table desk. Since I arrived late I would have dinner at my desk. Spaulding, as he would do at any meal he could get to, willing shared my meal with me, ensuring no leftovers and a very clean plate. Saturday morning: Saturday morning would start with me stumbling down stairs and going into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Tea in hand, I would go to the study where Spaulding would be on the couch or in a chair. Upon seeing me he would pop up and we would head out the door for a short walk down our 200-yard-long driveway. Half the walk was through fields on each side and the other half with forest. I would talk to God, usually thanking him for these beautiful natural surroundings, Spaulding would take care of all the business a morning brings. At the foot of the driveway, I would look up and won our isolated dirt road, to the East to greet the morning sun, to the west to observe the incoming weather. Spaulding would mark the trees and bushes needing marking that morning. After a minute or two we would turn around and head back to the house. He would be in more of a rush to get back than me, usually meeting me at the side door as I rounded a corner. Once inside, the, other Saturday morning activities at my desk would begin liking reading the news or answering emails. Spaulding at my feet under the desk. After a while, Saturday morning breakfast, my favorite meal of the week would begin. Usually Santa would start this by frying up fresh bacon. Some-how only a certain percentage of the bacon being cut got to the frying pan. I suspect Spaulding’s charms do in fact work on Santa. At the table, my fried bacon would be shared in about 50/50 proportions with Spaulding. He could eat eggs, but only from my plate, he had no interest in being served his own eggs. He had egg a lot. After breakfast, we go to town each week to have a latte at our favorite coffee shop and do the weeks shopping. This is Spaulding’s favorite trip because no one but him is ever invited, so it validates his special family status above all other creatures (or persons). He would happily hop into the back seat of the car and immediately get on the consul between the front two seats. He would concentrate on the road in front of us with a concerned look on his face. It would take a minute or two and I would look at him and offer to let him drive. He usually declined and retreated to his window which would be rolled half way down for him to take in all that fresh country air. Once at the coffee shop, Santa and I would hop out of the car and ask him to be good. This was a sincere request because any stranger who strolled too close to the car would discover that there was a fairly effective alarm system semi-sleeping in the back seat. This same request would be delivered at each Saturday morning stop. I have no proof, but I suspect that the little orange Honda CRV was understood by the good people of Kuldiga to be left alone on Saturday morning if ever they would come upon it. The trip home would include the same rituals, where Spaulding would indicate his interest in leading us home from his perch on the center consul but eventually move to the window to enjoy the view and the fresh air. Today: This is how each weekend has started the last four and a half years. But this weekend was different. There was an empty back seat in little orange Honda CRV. I actually got to kiss my wife hello upon being picked up at the bus station on Friday night. I did not have the strength to walk the driveway and talk to God, he knows I have only one request of him this weekend. I ate my own bacon and eggs. The drive to the coffee shop required only my piloting and the Honda sat quiet and unguarded in Kuldiga this morning. The pedestrian of town having no surprises. This weekend seems very empty and it isn’t even 1:00 yet.

Saying Goodbye to an old friend

I have to say goodbye today to my beloved vizsla, Captain Spaulding. He sustained a spinal injury about 2 months ago and his health has deteriorated sharply since. He cannot get up and walk, his blatter and bowel functions are pretty close to gone and he shivers with pain if not on a pain killer. While attributing a human experience like suffering to an animal was not deemed to be appropriate to apply to animals in the past, C.S. Lewis wrote there are higher animals, like pets who become part of a family and so deserve some of the sanctity reserved for people. Whether Spaulding’s pain creates suffering for him the family is suffering for him. So balancing that suffering and the sanctity of his family life, that hard decision to end the suffering and free him has been taken and his suffering and pain will stop today. A vet will visit us this afternoon and do what they do. Sparlings’ remains will be buried just above my vineyard under an apple tree, a tree that is usually very fruitful, but for some reason barren this year. It is a beautiful spot worthy of his memory. We have had Spaulding for a decade. Our house in Prague had been broken into and one of the more tolerable security measures was get a dog. As for providing better security, he failed, but was great to us as a family member. Maybe not so great as a neighbor or friend (to humans that is, he got along well with most of the dogs in our various neighborhoods and had sincere affection for some). To people visiting or who we may come across, he could be an example of the prefect dog or the perfect monster. It was impossible to predict and often you came away with the same result. He terrorized old ladies on the beach for no understandable reason while being affectionate and protective of my aging Mother. On one occasion, he jumped into a visiting friends lap introducing her white blouse to her red wine. So, while Spaulding may have been a saint to some of us, he was not that kind of saint. Spaulding brought us together simply by walking and sitting with us. In the beautiful parks of Prague, the beaches of Florida or the forests of Latvia, walking Spaulding was a totally enjoyable and bonding experience. His instincts as a bird dog and pointer made it impossible for him to walk next to you. Instead, he would be out in front exploring, constantly circling you as you progressed, ensuring that every creature within 100 feet of your path was tormented with curiosity and usually chased away. His nobility upon finishing the task was second to none, his purpose and role in walking we humans safely complete. Nature was a better with Spaulding in it. Sitting at the dinner or picnic table, his place was in my lap, offering the occasional chin lick, never stealing food but seducing me to share what was on my plate. He was always an interested conversationalist, always winding up with the most good stuff without really giving away his motives for participation. On the couch for the occasional evening we might be watching a movie or binge watching some TV show, he only needed to be in the spot you unknowingly pre-warmed for him. He enjoyed television and gave me great competition on who fell asleep first. He never had to hold the TV channel changer and always made sure any bowl of ice cream started was finished and quite clean. Our connection pure, he somehow loved the things I love. He had an incredibly expressive face and was often speaking to you, although in his own language. You pretty much always knew where he stood on most domestic big issues, like; should cats or other dogs be invited to the dinner table, now would be a good time for a walk, now would be a good time for dinner or a snack, and other less important issues. He also expressed the thought; are you two arguing because that is creating too much stress for me. He and his face often promoted domestic tranquility. We shared homes in three countries over two continents the last decade. We shred many movies together. I first saw the film Marley and Me on a plane from Prague headed to New York with him in the cargo hull (maybe increasing its tear jerk ending a million-fold). Walks, meals, movies, all will be less enjoyable without him. So today I say goodbye to my friend. There is no question he is this man’s best friend. I take a bit of comfort though, since I believe heaven will be for each of us a place where God’s love is perfected with all of his creation, I will see you again one day my friend.

A wonderful Christmas piece from a very interesting author. Christmas and Living beyond Fear The archangel Gabriel encouraged Mary and Joseph to trust in God. By George Weigel — December 24, 2016 Thanks to the crèche, introduced to Western Christendom by Saint Francis of Assisi in 1223, the Christmas story has become seamless: a unified tale with a single cast of characters, from Mary, Joseph, and the infant savior, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, through the choir of angels, the shepherds, the local Bethlehem townsfolk, the census-takers, the Magi, and wicked Herod the Great. Yet the two gospel “infancy narratives” from which we construct the Christmas story are quite distinct. The leading figure in Matthew’s account of the birth, infancy, and early childhood of Jesus is the just man, Joseph, who is told in a dream that the unexpected child in the womb of his betrothed is “of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20) — and who then saves the child from the murderous jealousy of Herod by taking his little family to Egypt. By contrast, Mary is the principal actor in Luke’s infancy narrative, and it is to her that the angel Gabriel announces the Incarnation, of which she is invited to be the human agent. Mary is the driver of the story throughout the birth and childhood of Jesus, right through the dramatic scene when she loses her son in the tumult of Jerusalem at Passover time and chastises Jesus after finding him with the teachers of Israel in the Temple. Matthew’s genealogy of the savior, addressed to what is thought to have been a Jewish-Christian audience, begins Jesus’s lineage with Abraham and centers it on King David: Thus, at the very outset of his gospel, Matthew proclaims that this Jesus is the Davidic king-messiah for whom Israel has longed, although he will reign in a different way over a different kind of kingdom. Luke, writing to what is thought to have been a more Greco-Christian audience, drives the genealogy backward through David and Abraham to Adam, “the son of God” (Luke 3:38) — thus underscoring the universality of Jesus’s messianic mission, to which Matthew alludes indirectly by the tale of the “wise men from the East” who had “seen his star in the East” and had “come . . . to worship him” (Matthew 2:1–2). Yet it is the Greco-Christian Luke who tells the story of the miraculous birth of John the Baptist (son of the Jewish priest Zechariah) as the prelude to the story of Jesus, thus making John the hinge between the Old Testament and the New, between the covenant with the people of Israel and the New Covenant in which the “wild . . . shoot” of the Gentiles is grafted onto the “olive tree” of Israel (Romans 11:17). It’s a bit complicated. So we may be grateful to the Poverello of Assisi for bringing this all together in a singularly winsome way by inventing the crèche. Yet what struck me recently on pondering these familiar but nonetheless distinct (and even disjunct) accounts is the link between them: the angelic admonition, “Be not afraid.” In the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the archangel Gabriel tells Joseph (who is considering a quiet dissolution of his betrothal to the pregnant Mary) not to fear taking her for his wife. In the first chapter of Luke, the same Gabriel — whose name in Hebrew means “God is my strength” — tells the virgin teenager not to be afraid, for “you have found favor with God” and thus have been chosen to be the God-bearer, Theotokos: to which Mary replies with the paradigmatic statement of Christian discipleship, “Be it done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). The Incarnation and the birth of the Messiah are a summons to fearlessness: and not the fearlessness that ignores what is objectively frightening, but the fearlessness that lives on the far side of fear in covenant relationship with the God who is Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14), “God with us.” This is not the fearsome god of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians who demands, and gets, child sacrifice; nor is the God of the Bible like the Homeric deities in the Iliad and the Odyssey, for whom men and women are playthings to be manipulated on a terrestrial gaming board. No, Emmanuel is, literally, God-with-us: with us at the beginning of the Covenant with Israel, on pilgrimage from the bondage of Egypt and into the freedom that truly liberates through righteous living; with us in the manger at the beginning of the New Covenant, dependent on human cooperation for the beginnings of his salvific mission yet radiating peace and light. This is a good Christmas season to be summoned once again to fearlessness, for it comes at the end of a year of fear. Underneath the passions and cacophony of the 2016 election campaign one could sense deep fears — very few of which have been assuaged, on either side of the partisan divide, since the result came into focus in the small hours of November 9. Fear stalks the Middle East, cradle of civilization and birthplace of biblical religion, in various merciless forms. Fear now haunts Europe, as the dry husk of a once vibrantly Christian culture — a German Weihnachtsmarkt, or “Christmas market” — is targeted by homicidal maniacs claiming a religious warrant for their mayhem and cruelty. Throughout the world, order is unraveling, because order must be maintained and has not been for the past eight years. And when order unravels, innocents die and fear drives public life, even as it warps human relationships. There is, in truth, much to be feared in the world, from the resurgence of particularisms that take ugly rather than noble forms to the fragility of the global economic and financial systems: from personal hatreds to systemic deficiencies. The Christian response — the Christmas response — to these and many other very real threats is not to deny them, but to live beyond the fear they engender because God is with us. Emmanuel, God-with-us, is on pilgrimage with his people in history. And Emmanuel continually calls the people with whom he lives to fearlessness. Emmanuel calls his pilgrimage partners to resist the temptation to fall back on the habits of the slaves they were in Egypt, in a vain search for security. Emmanuel calls his people to live the Beatitudes as the royal road to happiness and true human flourishing, rather than settling for the illusory promises of the Culture of Me — another life-warping and death-dealing response to fear. So by all means let us look at things squarely and take the measure of that which is rightly fearsome. But in doing so, let us also heed Gabriel’s call to both Joseph and Mary: to bind ourselves to God-with-us, Emmanuel, who makes his presence known in unlikely ways — a burning bush, a pillar of fire by night, an innocent newborn — yet constantly calls his people to live beyond fear. For Emmanuel is not only with us. Emmanuel goes before us and shows us the way to a brighter future in a Kingdom without fear. — George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.

State Department Interview The following is a transcript of an interview between a new political appointee named Till, interviewing a career foreign service officer named Neverbright. Political appointee (Till) :Good Morning, thanks for coming. Help us understand what you do: State career employee (Neverbright): I am deputy undersecretary second secretariat peace negotiator for the Middle and Near East. I negotiate our peace treaties with our peace partners in the region. Till: And what are those agreements you have negotiated? Nerverbright: I negotiated the landmark Bilateral Peace Agreement between the USA and Durka Durkastan. Till: And what does that agreement do? Neverbright: That agreement ensures that the government of Durka Durkastan does not support terrorism and remains in the US's sphere of influence. In return for not supporting terrorism, we provide 20 billion a year in aid. Till: Have they supported terrorism in the past? Neverbright: Yes, we have intelligence reports going back 25 years indicating that they have supported radical Islamists groups engaging in various Middle Eastern conflicts with money or weapons which were sourced from Russia. Till: And how do they finance this support? Neverbright: From oil revenues. The country has the 12th largest known supply of oil reserves in the world. Till: And the government structure? Neverbright: They are an Islamic Republic ruled by the same Mullah for 50 years. Till: A republic? How? Neverbright: The people elect a powerless legislative body every 5 years. The legislature approves the Mullah's edicts, incorporating them into law and regulation. They are a very advance society of laws. Till: I see. And the treaty you negotiated, how long did you have to negotiate? Neverbright: Only 12 years. Till: I see. And once signed, how was compliance? Neverbright: Well, we have mixed signals. Through the Durk Durkastan self monitoring program, they have been in full compliance now for the10 years since signing the agreement. Through covert intelligence monitoring, they violated the agreement in the first three minutes after signing. Till: I see. Was the aid stopped? Neverbright: No of course not, the US honors its agreements. Where would we be of we sacrificed our influence in the world by dishonoring our agreements? We went right back to the table with the Durka Durkastanies and negotiated with the threat of sanction if they failed to negotiate. Till: And how did that go? Neverbright: Well we have continued to productively negotiate for 8 years now. Till: And the support for terrorism? Neverbright: Well, we have had mixed results. The CIA provided us with an analysis showing the support for terrorism has gone up when the price of oil is high, but gone down when the price of oil is low. Additionally, their trade deficit with Russia seems to go up when the price of oil is low. We think this causes internal economic stress. A secondary conclusion to our analysis was Russian weapons merchants like to be paid. Till: I see. And going forward where do you see yourself in the state department? Neverbright: No one in this agency has the in-depth knowledge of the Middle and Near East terrorism financing or supporting mechanisms than me. I would like to keep supporting my country by negotiating agreements or the resulting non-compliance agreements that support American influence in the region. Till: I see. Just two more questions. What kind of car do you drive? Neverbright: A Prieus. Till: How is the electricity to your home supplied?? Nevebright: I reduce my DC Power and Light bills with renewable clean energy. I got a good deal on some Solyndra solar panels a few years back. My carbon foot print is amongst the lowest at State. It would be even better if I could afford the current solar panels offered in the market at that time, but for some reason the Solyndra panels were a steel. I am a great negotiator. Till: Well, thank you for talking to us. We will get back to you.

My Little Brother

My Little Brother My second youngest brother lost his battle with cancer on Sunday. I was shocked, although I had no right to be. For eight or nine months the tumors had been releasing a hormone which raised his blood pressure and heart rate to dangerous levels. The medical community added more and more to their counter attack on his body, and on Sunday his heart just stopped. I was in shock. I had spoken to him just 2 weeks ago. He had been getting better for over a month after a four month period of more in the hospital than out of it. He was upbeat and we fooled around on the phone as usual. We spoke of our mutual love of Barry White albums and their effect on our spouses. He had been out to a restaurant the weekend before. We were un-rushed and covered all we wanted to cover. Today, this morning, sitting in my office in Riga, seven hours before my family on the East Coast of the US were up, I opened Facebook. One of his college friends had a link to his obituary. I read it in horror. I wailed. I did not know grown people could wail. I wailed. For half an hour, alone at my desk, I cried, hard. For four years I had the conviction that he would get through this. I thought no other way. How could I? The alternative was unthinkable. The first year of his illness, his professional life was slow, so I drafted him into a business venture I had been developing. I did not need his money, only his company. We spoke almost every day. We travelled to California and Latvia together. We played it out until there was nothing left to play out. He gave his advice from experience in the field. It was more entertainment than business, but it was an enjoyable ride. Of the five boys, we shared the same attributes. Tools did not belong in our hands. We played with balls as children, not trucks, not tools. Our handyman abilities are a running family joke. We were meant for office work. Our hands, at best were for cooking, not building. My other three brothers can repair anything, Frank and I were lucky to start the car or lawn mower. It was a bond between us. He was my best man at my first wedding, for no other reason than we were naturally close and had much in common. About eight years ago, we together drove one of my parent’s cars from New York to Florida for them. It was a BMW 5 series. The cup holders flipped out of the console between the driver and passenger seat. The cup holders are incomplete loops, opening toward the seat it is meant to serve. Every time we stopped for a break and picked up a coke or coffee, the turn back onto the highway spilled the beverage in the seat the cup holder was meant to serve. We wore our beverages, from New York to Florida. We laughed at ourselves because we knew; our other three brothers would have been able to fix the problem. We just had to live with it. Frank was special. He had an ability to compete that none of us other brothers has. He developed sporting capabilities that allowed him to compete at levels we just did not have. In team sports or individual sports, he was competitive, the rest of us were average. He was comfortable and in that ability and it made playing with him a pleasure. At the golf course it made him popular. It was pleasure to be there with him. When he felt his worst, a few months ago, I was told he said he missed my father and wished he were here to support him. My father passed away a little over seven years ago. I know my father is supporting him now. I can’t imagine how I will miss you Frank. You are a clear, familiar voice in my head. You occupy a unique place in my heart. As shock fades to grief. I wail.

The Cost of Trust

“Our distrust is very expensive” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. I love the quote above. It may define our times. But it raises the question; what is the cost of trust lost? Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation, a mortgage lender to Merrill Lynch clients won the Malcolm Baldridge Award in 1997. It was the first financial services company to win the award. Since that time, it has been common to hear total quality management or six sigma, be emphasized at financial services firms (although GE Capital subsidiaries had been working with it from the early 1990’s). While new and connected technology was being introduced by just about every financial services firm, the decade before the mortgage crisis was characterized by process improvement in time and cost. Leveraging the new technologies by efficient processes was paramount to competitive advantage. Better, faster, cheaper was on every leaders mind. Those efforts were paying off. In 2000 the cost to originate a mortgage loan was 141 bp’s, in 2003 it was down to 93 bp’s per the Mortgage Bankers Association Cost Study for those years. In cash to the bottom line that was $265. I use 2000 and 2003 because they are not too close to the financial crisis and may be more balanced as a benchmark than the years closer to the crisis when volumes were way up. It was a low interest rate environment where industry experts knew that most home owners, enjoying steady appreciation could be counted on to refinance possibly twice in a decade, if you provided good service. A focus on key performance indicators by a management team could improve customer satisfaction, speed to approvals and closings and lower costs, improving profitability or price competitiveness. Management sciences was at work (along with technology and very often driven by technology) in the mortgage industry. This was a great time to be in the business. Loans per production employee improved from 41 to 62, for the same period per the same study. Yes a 50% improvement. Ok, channel management might help that one a bit, but not 50%. What’s more, personnel cost per loan went from 70bp’s to 48bp’s for the same period. A very positive trend was developing. Let’s skip the crisis in this discussion and acknowledge you need to be managing production much tighter today than in 2003. Investor put-backs are requiring better quality controls are in place. But with the crisis, trust was lost. Government and investors (same stakeholder really) reaction to the industry’s performance to the crisis was lots of new rules because there is little trust that the industry participants will operate looking out for consumer or investor interest. That lost trust is costing quite a bit as every compliance officer knows. How much is that lost trust costing? Well the MBA released some cost numbers in December for the third quarter of last year. The total loan production expense was 2.13%. The loans per production employee were 16 (annualized). This is just over $3,000 more costly per loan than the 2003 value of 93 bp’s. That’s a lot of compliance. Fortunately for lenders, in the 2012 study secondary and marketing income was 271 bp’s, compared to 94 bp’s in 2003. That kind of spread can mask a lot of issues. But is that spread sustainable? The government has stated in many different ways they want to retreat from their current share of the secondary markets and have private investors come back to the market. The government insuring or buying over 90% of the loans originated is unsustainable. Private investors will want a lot more of that spread than the government has been taking. That brings us back to the cost to originate. The operational risk of sustaining a profitable business model is on the lenders shoulders. Maintaining access to capital markets is too important than cutting any corners to save on costs. Running at the current efficiencies is just as unsustainable as the governments participation rate in the secondary markets. Now that the rules are being defined and implemented, automation will help drive down some costs, but not all of it. The human process that originates a loan will need to be managed better than ever before. The management of that process had better be able to inspire trust, or it will not be competitive or sustainable. That is where leadership, not just management will be the differentiator. Those abilities beyond just control and coordinate are needed. Firms will need the key performance indicators of the loan origination process along with the metrics that evidence an aligned and engaged work force, with a strong values driven culture and clear responsible empowered decision makers ensuring compliance beyond anything programmable or the limits of policy memos. Are you ensuring that for your business? Can you evidence it when someone like a regulator or investor asks to see it? You will not be able to rely on trust, it has been lost. They know you can do, they just don’t trust you will do it. The cost of trust lost is usually handled in a very macroeconomic fashion like the cost to society or to generations or market access or liquidity. But sometimes you can calculate it on what you do every day. So the answer to the question; what is the cost of trust lost? If you’re a lender today; about $3,000 per loan originated.

Using Compliance to Rebild Trust

“Our distrust is very expensive” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. He had no idea. The Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index (for the second quarter of 2012) found that only 21 percent of Americans trust the financial system, the lowest point on record since March 2009. This decrease was largely driven by a drop in trust of national banks. Late last summer Innoveta Strategies conducted a survey of financial services executives and found a strong majority (86%) working on restoring public trust for themselves and the industry. Optimistically 83% felt that public trust in financial services industry can be restored. In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey introduces and defends the idea that trust in business and in life is built on competence and character. A lot of pages have been written in the last few weeks on the industry reaction to the CFPB issuance of the Qualified Mortgages\Ability to Repay rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The rules are far from perfect, but they are specific and will become the starting point in how the federal government regulates the mortgage industry going forward. Incorporating these rules into the human and technological processes used to originate mortgages is now a tactical imperative of industry participants. The mortgage loan origination process has never been more expensive according to the MBA Cost Study. Codifying these rules efficiently provides the opportunity to reduce this cost. Attitude is a significant driver of performance. A bad attitude can derail the best calculated plans. Embracing any task makes its execution more efficient. To ensure efficient execution and demonstrate the competence that helps build trust, it is every leader’s duty to embrace the task before him or her. This might be difficult this time around because in the same Innoveta Strategies Survey, 76% of respondents disagreed that the government understood the challenges to the housing market and 53% disagreed that the government had the best interest of the consumer in mind. The competence with which the industry displays in this stage of a major market overhaul will be a significant contribution to the rebuilding of public trust. Demonstrating a commitment to compliance might even demonstrate a little bit of character.

Addressing Mistrust

“Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business” John Whitney, Columbia Business School The cost to originate a residential mortgage has ballooned from 93 bp’s in 2003 to 231 bp’s in the third quarter of 2012. Almost all of that are new procedures and reporting of additional data required by investors and regulators. There are several ways to reduce this cost in the near future. Recently, the final issuance of guidelines will allow technology and policy and procedures, guidelines to standardize the new requirements, thus bringing down the cost somewhat. But there is still a large premium in that number for the mistrust lingers with the mortgage industry today. The rigor with which a successful total quality management or continuous improvement process style of management takes, requires using a lot of facts in a continuous and organized fashion. The tool kit includes reports, scorecards and dashboards to generate the information we need to digest in order to determine the quality and efficiency of our groups’ processes. We answer the question- are we meeting our goals or stretch goals for our process and production? The information positions us to make the many small decisions that can often have a big impact on our production or quality goals. The mortgage industry has well known quality and process metrics; speed to approval or closing, error rates and related reworking, effectiveness of turning inquiries into applications, applications into approvals and approvals into closed loans. Less pursued and often more impactful in managing these key performance indicators is the information we rarely turn to regularly because we don’t turn it into data. If we did, this information can also be used to make small decisions that can have a big impact on results. They are things like- is management’s vision for the business and future known and understood by those doing the work (alignment of the workforce), is our organization’s culture supportive of what we are asking of employees and want to deliver to customers and other stakeholders, are employees engaged and do they have what they need to make decisions in the course of normal and not so normal circumstances? The first reaction to these questions by leaders is usually -that’s why we invest in training and technology and aggressively document our expectations in policy, procedures and guidelines. All of that is good, and in the rigor of continuous improvement, one can never be let up. But the key quality and process indicators are results and don’t directly measure the questions in the previous paragraph. Those measurements have to be derived by asking the questions to the parties involved, collecting the results and measuring performance against a goal. The goal setting and asking part are very often not ever bothered with when a company is focusing on big issues around growth and process improvement. That is as big a mistake as not asking customers if they are satisfied. Best practices needs to include performing regular assessments similar to the questions posed above, as well as other questions measuring a variety of issues around the attitudes pervasive in your organization, capturing the results and tracking their movement over time in a report, scorecard or dashboard, similar to other key indicator measurement tools. These tools have the ability to reflect when an organization’s culture supports decisions in the absence of technical or policy, that are knowledgeable and consistent with all stakeholder interests. It may seem like a “nice to have” and not a “have to have”, except a careful reading of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Examination Manual reveals that they are going to look at a firm’s culture specific to the law. What metrics will you show them to affirm your supportive culture? Managing and leading in the world going forward requires a larger tool kit. Assessments that solicit feedback on attitudes and values will be as important to decision making as the quality and process key performance indicators used today. And as you chip away at mistrust, you will move costs down, enhancing profitability and sustainability.

Rebuilding Trust

A man's character is his fate. — Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (c. 540-c. 475 B.C.) “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.” – Warren Buffet Is there any trust for the mortgage banking industry? When the government, our elected officials and their appointed agents (regulators), files lawsuits against major industry participants, it is society saying, you have done wrong, you violated our trust. Three government and or settlements of lawsuits (?) hit the news headlines recently: the $26 billion settlement with the five big mortgage servicers for robo-signing, FHFA lawsuits in the name of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against seventeen major banks for fraud in private label securities sold to them, Wells Fargo settling with the Department of Justice for originating subprime loans disparately to minorities. So our government and its organs have said “no” to the way the industry originates, sells and services mortgage loans. Is there any question as to public trust for the industry? Building or rebuilding trust is a financial services industry-wide imperative as identified in the Ernst & Young’s Global Retail Banking Survey of 2011 as well as many other research reports. Steven Covey writes in The Speed of Trust that trust requires competence and character. Competence has been exemplified by the industry leadership’s speed and commitment to addressing the above mentioned issues as well as its ability to size to the market, adapt to both the changing borrower credit performance and capital market consolidation as well as preparing for the changing regulatory compliance burden. The ‘character’ part of this equation is exemplified by ethical behavior. In order to rebuild trust it is important that the work done in both of these areas is effectively communicated. Home prices may stabilize the housing market, but the housing finance market is unsustainable in its current form. Who contributes what to the reconstruction of this market is a combination of both competence and character, i.e. who is trusted to do it. The previous market took a lot of things for granted, like the government was happy to directly or indirectly promote home ownership (think Fannie Mae never forgetting to mention “The American Dream”, mortgage deductions, etc.,). Certainly government is going to have a big say in what comes next. What voice will the industry have in this process? Well, it certainly is competent, but show me the character. Character is a much harder topic to communicate. It has lots of components and is pretty subjective. How is the mortgage industry in general about trusting? A recent survey of mortgage industry leaders suggests we don’t exactly excel at trust beyond our immediate sphere of influence. The mortgage leaders’ survey results showed gaps between the values leaders and their organizations hold and their confidence that these values are the standard of behavior and decision-making within the manager and employee ranks. Also, most organizations have a written code of ethics or code of conduct (91%), yet responses to management practices integrating values and ethics into practice is considerably lower. The survey results suggests that leaders communicate about ethics much more verbally than in writing (informally rather than formally), and amongst the firm’s leadership more than to the employee base. There seems to be considerable confidence in ethical leadership, yet to a lesser degree, measurement of its values and communication of expectations and results beyond the leadership team. So, if trust is the sum of competence plus character, and I don’t trust particularly easily, how do I get to being trusted? I know I have character (ethics), I want to believe my organization is ethical, but I don’t feel quite so sure about that. Like other things you manage, do you have a “system” for managing and discussing ethics? You may train your employees on ethics, but if you use the industry tools, that training is focused on the individual identifying an ethical issue and how to make ethical decisions addressing that issue. That industry provided training has no content about how to talk or write about ethics, how to manage it, how to track or report it. In other words - it has no content on deploying or maintaining an ethical framework. An ethical framework will usually include identifying your firms’ values along with its vision and mission, recording them in a code of ethics or a code of conduct. Once these values are clearly stated you must incorporate them into your firm’s documentation, like policies and procedures, job descriptions, pay increase, bonus and performance evaluation policies. Pushing yourself to identify and write these documents will create a language for your organization to communicate about ethics. The positive reinforcement of ethical behavior and effective communication through performance and pay increase processes will eventually have the effect of having an easily identifiable ethical component of your organizations culture. Implementing an ethical framework and consistently demonstrating accountability, transparency and mutual respect directly improves risk management and compliance and better positions firms for productive communication with all stakeholders, including regulators, customers and investors. This in turn leads to building trust. There is good news too. The Harvard Business Review did an issue on Trust in 2009. Among the items they discussed was the observation that people are hard-wired to trust. The first thing we learn in life is to trust, because we are totally dependent beings for the first few years. We want to trust. The recommendation was similar to President Reagan’s foreign policy - trust but verify. With the headlines full of examples of abused trust, we need to find the language and information that demonstrates the character necessary to be trusted. Allow people to verify. Leveraging already strong process management skills should be a great place to start.

How We Communicate About Business Ethics

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” Author — Unknown There are many good reasons to be able to communicate effectively about ethics. One is, industry and especially mortgage banking has lost a lot of the publics’ trust and by all estimations needs to regain some of that back. If you are doing something about that but are not able to express it, the benefits of your efforts may be a long time in coming. Closer to home, as society continues to react to the financial crisis, our front line employees are repeatedly asked to deliver government sponsored programs or comply with under-defined regulations which constantly yield unintended consequences. Another reason is that business schools are beginning to say that they have historically relied too heavily on quantitative aspects of business and are identifying qualitative aspects missing from their curriculums. So our bright young graduates and tomorrow’s leaders have no experience discussing ethics. Can we competently discuss ethics within our environment? A recent study of mortgage banking leaders suggests that senior leaders discuss ethics amongst themselves pretty freely, they discuss them with their employee base a fair amount and with their board of directors the least. It also found that leaders discuss ethics more frequently than attempt to write about it. Over 90% of those who participated in the survey said their organizations had a Code of Ethics, so the first step in a foundation with words and thoughts does exist in those environments. While leaders were confident in their own ethical clarity and observable ethical actions, they were far less confident in their employees’ ethical understanding. In the absence of senior leaders talking and writing about the industry’s or firm’s ethics, are employees only left with the narrative formed by the media or politicians? Will that improve the industry’s ability to add its voice to the public debate about who and how home finance is structured in the future? Less than half the survey respondents indicated that their firms had a methodology to deal with ethical issues. However, an ethical framework needs to be in place to enhance communication and improve the influence in society the industry has in determining its future. (... maybe - to improve industry’s prospects of determining its own future through its influence in the society?) An ethical framework uses the vision/mission of a planning process (purpose), and a code of ethics to align the firm’s values. These values are put it (incorporated?) into the firm’s documentation (policy & procedures, job descriptions, performance reviews and any other documentation which supports manager and employee decision making. It requires the firm to train its employees and managers on ethics adequately and regularly. Additionally, to ensure usage, your ethics key performance indicators must be identified which are usually answers to stakeholder issues and questions. Then create reports and score cards to track the indicators and measure improvement on a topic. Finally introduce into standing committee agendas these reports and score card to reinforce that managers and employees are accountable to perform these tasks regularly and to be fully operationalized. The development of this framework along with embracing it will create a common language about ethics within your organization as well as help align your firm’s values with its people’s decision making. This foundation will support enhancing your firm’s voice in the debate on the future of the industry.

General Article on Ethics and Mortgage Banking

I was talking to a Mortgage Banking CEO at an industry conference recently. His priority was managing growth, which had recently been very impressive. He felt they were doing it well. I asked if he thought his organization was ethical. He said it was. I inquired how he knew. He replied he just knew, conceding he had no particular facts but that his primary contribution was to hire the best people, which he felt he did. He personally put the senior team in place. They are a good team, close to all the operations and each are good managers and all have integrity. I asked him if being ethical was important to him. His reply was yes. His attitude was not unique. Most leadership training begins with hiring the best people. What is curious is that in an information and data driven industry, in which all senior people know process engineering as well as any other industry, there is no data, reports or score cards at our finger tips to demonstrate a strong ethical framework is in place. On the topic of ethics, historically managers concerned themselves with putting the right people in place and then let things sort out. Explicit communication on ethics was nonexistent, but reliance was on the knowledge that a good rigorous debate about a decision and then the results and the achievement of the goals would speak for themselves. In fact, over the last decade or more, corporate social responsibility crowded out core business ethical dialogue. But now, the ethics of the core business of mortgage lending and servicing is having a hard time finding its ethical foundation. The virtues of home ownership are being challenged by millions of homeowners being underwater. And the mortgage market is dominated by government requiring much deeper compliance measures, many of which have not yet been developed. What is ethical? Where are the ethics? In a recent industry survey of senior leaders in the Mortgage Banking industry, participants responded unanimously with “strongly agree” to Character, Integrity, Communication and Decision Making being critical for sustainability and growth. Over 90% of participants said their firm had a “code of ethics”, the starting point for an ethical framework. Yet the survey indicated that leaders communicated verbally much more frequently than in writing on ethical matters. Horizontal communication within the firm takes place, but, vertical communication much less frequently. In the survey the question was asked if over the last six months they communicated with other senior managers, the board of directors or the employee base on ethics. Also, they were asked how they communicated; verbally or in written form with each group. For each group, verbal and presumably informal communication occurs much more frequently than written (formal). Additionally, while leaders responded that the senior management team spoke of ethical matters with some frequency, they indicated that they were much less confident that the broader employee base communicated or were aware of the ethical values the firm embraced. A full 81% of respondents to the survey strongly agreed that senior management was clear on the ethical values of the firm. Similarly 72% strongly agreed managers and supervisors were accountable for promoting ethical conduct. Yet, only 36% strongly agreed their firms had an ethical methodology and only 30% felt their employees knew their code of ethics. Through several questions, senior leaders indicated confidence in themselves concerning ethical values, clarity, accountability and communication, but when asked about their employees, they indicated much less confidence. Similarly, “strongly agree” answers to using ethics in performance evaluations, pay increases or bonus calculation all was much less (33%) as was whether the firm regularly demonstrates adherence to its code of ethics in its policies and procedures (43%) than the questions pertaining to senior management. The absence of an ethical framework greatly debilitates confidence that the ethical teams of people and firms they put together actually can demonstrate their values in action or measure improvement of their use and communication of those values. By ethical framework I mean: use a vision and mission statement(s) and a code of ethics to determine and align the firms values, anchor the firm values in its documentation (policy & procedures, job descriptions, performance reviews etc.), train all their employees adequately and regularly on those values and how to use them, identify key performance indicators for proper use of the values and create reports and score cards to capture this use, and finally measure the results and introduce them into standing committee agendas to be fully “operationalized”. What the CEO above said above is representative of classic textbook leadership; put the right people in place. But after hiring the best people, firms need to do more. Managing ethically is not enough in today’s environment. Communicating ethical considerations for decision making and how they were made is becoming more and more important as decisions are subject to subsequent review. By “operationalizing” ethics, firms will be in an improved position to demonstrate to all stakeholders, including regulators and the general public that in fact it is an ethical firm, and this is how they know.

Some Business Posts

I have used this blog for personal posts which mostly just enterained myself. For a bit under a year now I have been developing with a partner a business consultancy dedicated to the goal of bringing much trust into the financial services industry and particularly the mortgage industry. This we hope will stimulate better lending, smarter regulation and more private capital. Along this journey we have had the opportunity to write a strawman Canon of Ethics for the Mortgage Bankers Association along with preparing and delivering some ethics training. We also prepared some ethics training for the American Bankers Asssociation. While we were researching these efforts and studying the industry in general, I have made notes and in some cases attempted to write articles on the topics we encountered. These articles have sat on my hardrive for a while and I have no serious plan to publish them anytime soon. But I do want them available to anyone who might ever be interested, so I will post them here. I will try to label things clearly so that it is easy to distinquish what is a business post from what is just a personal interest post. If anybody still reads this blog, thank you. I hope to visit it more regularly in the coming months. Thanks Bill

The Good Soldier

I finished reading the Good Soldier Svjiek recently and enjoyed much of what the story had to offer. While Eastern Europeans are all familiar with the story, I dare say most Westerners are not. It is a story of an unfortunate and unwilling Czech soldier drafted into the First World War For most of the story he follows orders to the best of his ability and to the letter of the instruction, only to have very amusing and unintended consequences. With the exception of anything from Kafka, it is the literature Czech’s are most proud of and the story is celebrated in Prague and bars and pubs throughout the Czech Republic. It was an important influence for Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, for you Westerners who need a reference point.
Similar to the Mystery of Edwin Drood, the author died prior to finishing his vision of where the story or characters will go, so the reader is empowered to visualize his or her own ending. This attribute has contributed to the mystique of the story and fueled the popularity. Debating who Svjiek really was and what he stood for is the dominant pastime in Czech bars, replacing sports and politics. It is a lot of fun to read and experience the folklore yourself, Czech beer being the perfect enabler.
For those of us who have by design or not, wound up traveling the world doing our best to perform the tasks in front of us in new and strange environments, Svjieks’ adventure of unintended consequences is a pleasure. Just recognizing the successes or failures from what we do is so detached from the plan or intention, Svjiek is a brother traveler with a familiar tale and an end of our own making. What fun. If you have not read it, read it, especially if you are taking off for your first job overseas or just wondering how you got to where you are!

Turning 50

On Saturday I turned 50. It has been an incredible sprint to get here, even though I was in no hurry. Since my last posting in July, my family and myself have been through a lot of change and at a very fast pace. Let me recap it for you: when last I posted I was in the Latvian countryside enjoying a very slow and enjoyable 6 weeks. Then my wife, my dog (Capitan Spaulding) and I were driven two days with by my stepson and his girlfriend to Prague. We got Spaulding’s papers in order (from a ministry who was closed but accommodated us anyway) and flew to New York. During the flight we watched Marley and Me, which made my wife and I completely gilt ridden. IN New York we spent 5 days getting Spaulding over the flight by staying at my brother’s house. He has two German Sheppard puppies and the three dogs played and got along well. Spaulding’s healing from a drugged up flight was complete. We then packed again into a car and drove two more days to Florida, our new home. My son joined us the next day and started school the following Monday. My wife began getting her American green card paper work into place as I got our insurances and other necessary items in place. We had one and a half weeks, and then I left for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where a start-up had asked me to help out.
My wife has since gotten her green card and social security card. She has also learned to shop effectively online and is refurnishing a house that used to be a beach house into a Moroccan style villa. My mother moved back from New York to her home down the street from us. She is a valuable shopping companion to my wife, using her twenty five years of aggressive shopping in this part of Florida to teach my wife non- online shopping art forms.
My son and I visited colleges the second trip home which is when we celebrated my 50th birthday. I keep threatening him with me going back to college too. The option is very attractive to me most days. Riyadh is a very tough place to spend a significant amount of time if you are holed up in a hotel. The local social and cultural norms are pretty unsatisfying to a westerner. Perhaps Saudi Arabia will be a future blog entry, but let’s just say American college is looking very attractive.
After these past few months I can hardly believe the level of change in my life. To add more disbelief to the mix, I am half a century old. How the hell did that happen? I am pretty sure I would be in shock if I was not so busy.

Vacation

I have never been very good at vacation. I am not a planner, so any vacation that requires planning is dependent on someone else doing it and including me. I am from a big, close family and I moved from where my family is centered over twenty years ago, so most vacation time from work and holidays go to seeing them and catching up with old friends from that part of the US. I can think of very few memorable vacations.
This year is very different. My future wife and I purchased an old school in the countryside of her home country four years ago. I have never had a real vacation home before. As I wrote in previous entries, we spent a lot of time and effort this spring getting married a few times. I knew last winter that this would be a summer of transition, so I planned six weeks at the country house. This house is really a project, with a lot done, but a lot still to do. But this is the first summer that it has enough infrastructures to stay in for an extended period of time. It required a ton of work from us, family members from her family, neighbors, craftsmen and others. For the past two weekends we felt confident enough to invite friends to visit or in some cases stay with us. We hosted seven different friends and family visits or stays over the last week and a half.
We worked our butts off (really, my wife’s butt is gone) on the house. The location if the house is quite rural, so pushing nature back required me sacrificing my body to the insect world. I am pretty sure I have encephalitis and limes disease combined. My guests this weekend came back from a smoking break laughing and shared with me that the thought of a New Yorker in this countryside is hysterically funny to them. It occurred to me that I am living in a close to Green Acres world (New Yorker, Eastern European wife, Mr. Haney, Ralph and Alph, the whole woks. I am having the best vacation of my life.

Crying at Movies

I am movie fan. I like old movies (even some silent ones), new movies and everything in between. I am interested in not only the story, but the acting, directing, producing and technical aspects of film making. I buy movies on DVD and used to buy VHS because since living overseas, I do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV. With the DVD’s I watch not only the movie, but the Special Features, especially the short film on making the big film, and often re-watch the film with the directors comments. I usually then run to my computer and read whatever Wikipedia has on the movie, follow the links for the director, actors and writers. I rotate my reading with a broad variety of book types (biography, history, theology, philosophy, fiction) and a regular in the mix is movie making or movie makers. To sum it up, I am interested in movies.
Now I need to tell you that, while I can get through most of life’s events without a good cry, I cry at movies. The medium touches me. Without any real conscious knowledge of it, I am wiping my eyes somewhere in the first hour of a good movie. It has nothing to do with the plot; it is about being touched deeply, and appreciating it. That ability, the strength of that medium and the director’s execution of telling the story really are a deep pleasure for me. Tears of joy just flow. I am pretty sure this state of euphoria helps me to sleep soundly through repeat showings of a movie for visiting friends or family. I very comfortably sleep through my favorite movies during repeat performance. I can attempt to watch my favorite movies over 20 times, but I only get through it a few times before I use the film as a drug to induce a fulfilling hour or so nap. The nap and the cry are independent of each other and not mutually exclusive. I am not sure if I cry in my sleep during movies, but I do not cry in my dreams.
Last night my wife had to leave the last part of a movie we were watching together. It was a movie recommended by her son. It was a recent movie release and had won awards for its director and actors. I finished the movie (with some moist eyes, pretty under control for me) and went up stairs to see her. She was crying in bed. I asked what was wrong and she told me her son had told her the main character dies at the end and she did not want to see that. I asked why she recommended the movie and she said it was because it was supposed to be a good one, and was. She just did not want to see the character die at the end. I comforted her for 15 or 20 minutes and when I she looked ready to fall asleep, I ran to my computer to finish my movie experience.
Now I can only say that whenever I watch that movie again, I will be too scared to sleep and to be too anxious to cry. I will worry about her the entire time (assuming she is there). Empathy is not something I had ever brought to the movie couch. My life may have changed forever.

When things go right

There is an old debate amongst business people about how to best run a business. One side claims that detailed planning, accounting for every variable and contingency, thorough documentation of the environment, industry, market and company with sales plans that flow into budgets, etc is the way to go. The other side maintains that execution is the primary focus. This theory is that all the planning in the world will not foresee all the things that the environment, industry market, government etc will throw at you so worry about and focus on execution. There is plenty of evidence for each side of this argument.
We hosted about 23 friends and family the past 2 weeks at our wedding. We had the church and reception places reserved and took care of a few hotel arrangements. Most of the guests stayed at our home and took public transportation to various tourist venues and meals not at home over a long weekend.
Here is the rub, planning requires consensus and agreement. Planning for a dinner out would require a massive amount of consensus building on an issue that most everyone can be easily satisfied. That goes for tourist venues too. So on the lead up to the visits; I was a proponent of minimal plans. My soon to be wife on the other hand needed plans in place. We abstractly had a plan to use public transportation or taxi to get everywhere (no too easy with 23 bodies), debated over restaurants and tourist venues and guessed at attendance levels of each. My spouse had the one meal she needed catered at the house arranged, the rest were trips to the supermarket. She tortured herself with the fear of delegating some kitchen duty to guests, where I was confident no one in my family would think twice about going into my refrigerator and using my stove, toaster, coffee maker or whatever.
Somehow, and I don’t know how, everything went alright. The plans were minimal with not hard set itinerary but a general; this is what we will do when (except the wedding and reception). We managed to more than survive, deliver a very enjoyable weekend in Prague for everyone who came.
I can only assume that opposites really do attract and that the debate over planning and execution gets no contribution from our wedding. But it is sure nice when things go right.

Politicians and dog pee

Politicians and dog pee

I walk my dog Captain Spaulding in the park most days. The park is enclosed by a large stone wall on 38 hectares of forest surrounding a medieval castle and is a very dog friendly place, allowing dogs to run free. Most dogs give each other a sniff and then either go about their business or play together for a few minutes before moving on. On rare occasions they growl at each other but I have never seen a fight. There is one habit that is not quite playing and not quite fighting, male dominance type dance. A dog, usually the smallest, will raise his hind leg and pee on a bush. He will be followed by the next biggest dog that will go through the same exercise, followed by each of the other male dogs paying any attention to the ritual. Sometimes one of the early peers will double back for a shot at that final pee. The ritual is fascinating and I am sure means something, but I am never quite sure what. The dogs usually go about their business afterwards, without much of a thought.
I notice on the television talking heads news shows, a very familiar ritual occurs. Someone (usually a Senator or Congressman) starts a dialogue about the story of the week and sure enough, he is followed by a gang that goes about and soils the same topic over and over again. Of course one must exchange opening a mouth with lifting a leg and the bush for the topic of the week (with the exception of the previous administration of course) but the activity bears enormous similarities.
I don’t really know what the talking heads go off and do afterwards.

Weddings

Weddings

Well today I head to Riga to get married, the first time this month. Two weeks from now I will get married again in Prague. I was married once before, 19 years ago, in Connecticut. You might be thinking that I may be a global polygamist. I am not. My first marriage ended three years after it started. There is one woman at both the Riga and Prague weddings. One is a civil marriage, one a church service. Two friends will be the only guests present at the civil ceremony in Riga, a Latvian couple we are friendly with will serve as witnesses. The second, a church wedding, will be at St Barbara’s Chapel at Saint Thomas Church in the Augustinian Monastery in Prague. The civil wedding was recommended to us by our priest at Saint Thomas. With both of us being foreigners living in the Czech Republic, the administrative risks for a purely church wedding was a bit too high.

We have been hosting friends visits to Prague for two weeks now, it’s nice to slow down and just get married a few times, although, for the church wedding we will have visitors from the U.S. and Latvia, as well as a few local guests. Most of the guests are Schaubs (my family) from the U.S.; they require no planning and are not capable of any. It requires a consensus, which is mathematically impossible. This is creating a lot of unnatural feeling for my future spouse, but she has been around long enough to know how manage through it. All things with my family have a bit of unbelievable quality to them. I scheduled the wedding during one brother and his wife’s tip to Prague, 16 family members and friends are coming.

We have two weddings, visits and a double relocation back to the U.S. and Latvia this summer. I will keep you posted.