RETROSPECTIVE

In New York City, that venerable Big Apple of my eye, the March 20th Spring Equinox often arrives imperceptibly, falling, as it does, under the shadow of the much-heralded St. Patrick’s Day, flashily celebrated on lush city sidewalks a scant three days earlier. My father, Jim Gallagher, AKA “Irish,” “Broadway Jim,” and divers other self-appointed monikers, created a rationale for a four-day bacchanalia that began at dawn on St. Patrick’s Day and, like a rolling stone, carried on until the wee, small hours of the morning of March 20th, establishing in perpetuity in the mind of this writer, his only child, the notion that one’s birthday should always be preceded by a modicum of advance festivities– in his case, a four-day revelry.

To my father’s way of thinking, St. Patrick’s Day was just a prelude to the main event, a warm-up, as it were, in the run-up to his birthday on March 20th. He saw the entire city, bathed in green bunting as well as green beer, as homage to Irishmen everywhere, and to him in particular. Unlike some birthday revelers who celebrate partially out of a need to be feted, or out of a desire to collect presents, if you were within a handshake of Broadway Jim’s mitts, you were most likely to be treated to a round- or two - or three – of whatever spirits warmed the cockles of your heart. He was the living persona for Will Rogers’ statement, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Jim Gallagher was, himself, a man universally liked and respected, not because he was a hail-fellow-well-met storyteller in the Gaelic tradition who knew how to throw money around (which he was and did), but because he was a man of honor in a world sadly becoming one devoid of it. As the luck of this Irishman went, however, the saying, “If it weren’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any,” was eerily apropos. My mother, Jane, the light of his life, died too young at 44, living out the last eight years of her life confined to a hospital bed at home, tethered to an oxygen mask or sequestered under an oxygen tent, attended usually by nurses and often by nuns, 24/7. On another level of the house, his obstructionist mother-in-law, my doting grandmother, battled cancer for three of those years, while the family cocker spaniel, Buttons, her front left leg in a plaster cast - the result of a collision with 2,000 pounds of moving metal –raced, unbridled, up and down the row-house staircases, terrorizing all who entered the house on 79th Street.

Despite the appalling reality, my father soldiered on without complaint, taking on many of the duties of the times normally left to mothers or housekeepers – the traditional female, nurturing roles of society. In an era when “Father Knows Best” was the prevailing attitude as much as television entertainment, he never imposed his views or expectations on me: he led by example, never taking a sick day from work, doing the grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning without complaint. One of my favorite memories involves a life-long addiction to White Castle hamburgers, which he used to bring home by the sack after working late, waking my mother and me to share in this communion of the square bun.

Nor was my father’s decency limited to his family; when a neighbor, a family breadwinner, unexpectedly died, leaving a wife and three children without a roof over their heads, my father asked them to move into our home for as long as they needed, despite the 3-ring medical circus transpiring all around us. An unassuming man who hid his own light under a bushel, he held out his hand to those in trouble in myriad, quiet ways, a fact not always appreciated by my mother. When he brought home some just-met acquaintances for a late-night breakfast, my mother politely asked them to leave, citing the unexpected and ungodly hour of their arrival. Only after they had safely departed did my mother explain to my father that his new “friends” were at the helm of one of the city’s much-feared mob families. Dad didn’t bring home so much as a cold after that.

As I celebrate what would have been his 100th Birthday this Friday, March 20th, I want to end this walk down memory lane with a piece I wrote in his honor. Although his birthday is synonymous with the arrival of Spring, I drew it from an encounter we had in the Autumn, proving Jim Gallagher was really a man for all seasons.



RETROSPECTIVE
(DAUGHTER)
by
Lynn Gallagher

It is in the autumn that I most clearly
hear my father’s voice,
“Daughter! Daughter!”
his affection palpable across
the crisp New York City afternoon,
calling me amidst the street crowd,
catching me in mid-stride at seventeen.

The surprise of his presence –
like finding a forgotten bon-bon
at the bottom of a Whitman Sampler –
is snatched up and devoured with glee.

Rushing to hug him,
I reach up, and brushing the collar
of his herringbone coat,
catch the barest hint of
“Canoe,” which he wears
in reluctant concession to the women in his life,
remaining steadfast in his refusal to pronounce it properly,
much less acknowledge or
call it what it is – cologne.

With the insouciance that is youth
I hurry on my way without so much
as a backward glance,
expecting him to be there all
the thousands of my tomorrows.

Secure in the knowledge every two-year old basks in,
I know,
not by rote, nor by intellect,
but by some ancient instinct imprinted over
a thousand years of ancestors, that
I am his daughter
and his strength runs through my veins.
Becoming mine.

I take “Simon-Says” giant steps
faster and faster across
Fifty-ninth Street
into the Park
until
I have again disappeared into the crowd.
But I have no fear of being lost
for
I know who I am.

I am “Daughter.”

~~~~~~~

Obama's Slippery Slope

In any metropolis other than Washington, D.C., small-talk about the weather would be a safe topic, "much-ado-about-nothing," like water off a duck's back. Unfortunately for our newly-installed 44th President, Washington is unlike any other metropolis in the United States when it comes to weather.

This the clueless President learned when, as the first light snow-cum-freeze hit the metropolitan area's Beltway and neighborhoods one week-and-a-day after taking the oath of office, he quipped about his daughters' school having a snow-day, apparently much to his disapproval and their surprise. Opining that Washingtonians are "wimpy" in contrast to Nanook of the North Chicagoans, people from Chantilly to Chevy Chase took umbrage in what they considered to be an insult from their newly-arrived neighbor. Little did he know that he was on the slippery slope from snowstorm to maelstrom. In fact, most of the District's public schools were open, albeit with a late start, but that fact was apparently unknown to the new occupant of the Maison Blanche.

President Obama hit a nerve in remarking on the region's ability - or inability - to competently handle (with apologies to Chief Justice Roberts' life-long aversion to split infinitives) Mother Nature's gift of frozen precipitation...But I think the President owes the people of Washington an apology, and Washingtonians ought to cut him some slack.

Our physically-fit-ready-to-meet-all-comers President would go a long way towards pouring oil on troubled ice if he acknowledged that, since he most recently hailed from Chicago, where that city's snowfall warrants oversight at least six-months of the year, (thus creating an industry of snow-removal rivaled maybe only by Buffalo's) that perhaps his comments were a tad - harsh. To say nothing of the facts that Chicago is largely inundated by a blanket of pure snow (not ice or freezing rain) whose removal is operated under the auspices of just one city's administration; in contrast, Washington's dance with frozen precipitation is frequently a guesswork-in-progress, whose removal is subject to multiple municipalities' mandates.

If either President Obama or any of his family had been trapped in last year's Mixing Bowl's frozen nightmare (Perhaps he was elsewhere campaigning, and unaware of the almost-menacing grip ice had upon that newly-finished engineering wonder?), I doubt that he would have been so glib in his snowfall remarks. But more importantly, I suspect that underneath the bravado and rhetoric of the 44th President abides a desire to close the gap that existed between his predecessor and the press corps. And what better way to do this than by talking "small-talk," preferably something really, really safe - the weather. So, Washingtonians should get over it, and give the President a pass.

After all, President Obama is Commander-in-Chief only of the Armed Forces, not of Mother Nature and her Washington wiles.

DEUS EX MACHINA

If prayer works as promised, then Barack Obama, the twice-vested 44th President of these United States, should be in good shape. In the days immediately surrounding his whirlwind inauguration, President Obama was prayed over in a veritable maelstrom of prayer services, benedictions, invocations, supplications, implorations and entreaties.

The charasmatic president is going to need all the succor he can muster, whether from divine or mundane sources. The litany of crises confronting the planet's de-facto most popular leader has been well- and oft-documented, from Hoboken to Honolulu; Concord to Congress. The collapse of capitalism as we know it, home foreclosures on a scale akin to a sale on five day-old fish, unemployment rates ratcheting skyward, companies declaring bankruptcy in record numbers, 47 million Americans living without health insurance and a national debt climbing to the stratosphere are just a few of the issues jostling for "me-first" attention from the President.

And those are only the domestic concerns. We don't even want to think about national security, the Guantanamo Bay black hole, our trussed-like-a-Thanksgiving-turkey position in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian President (sounds like, according to my impeccably funny source, Whoopi Goldberg) Ahm-a-dinnajacket's determination to "go nuclear," the no-way-out Israeli-Palestinian quagmire and, oh yes, global warming, for good measure!

Prayer circle, anyone? One need only look to media pictures of the estimated
1.8 million who stood for hours in freezing cold temperatures on Inauguration Day, having no chance of catching a glimpse of the actual man, to recognize what has, for many, been rock-star adulation. Perhaps not since the Sermon on the Mount have expectations run so high. But it's not a rock-star the people crave: What they seek is a Deus ex Machina, a God out-of-thin air.

As the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount knew, deification comes with a hefty price tag: feeding the hordes. President Obama, well-schooled in the dangers of living life on a pedestal or in an ivory tower, addresses the multitudes with the papal "we" over the first-person "I" when delineating the mountain of work that lies ahead. All things considered, it might be a good idea, not only to keep on praying, but to step it up. That way, maybe we can be assured of our own miracle, a modern-day equivalent of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

A BLESSING IN EVERY LANGUAGE...

A blessing - Baraka - be upon the White House of Barack Obama, 44th President of these United States, and all who dwell therein.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

"Yes, We Can!" I Second the Motion...

Dawn arrived in America last night at 11:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, when 

Senator Barack Obama became the President-elect of the United States of America.  In that instant,  the candidate captured 284 electoral votes, 14 more than the requisite 270 required to elect him the nation's 44th President. Before the night was over, the President-elect would have a landslide of at least 349 electoral votes in his column, confirming the tsunami of support this man of the people enjoyed throughout the preceding two-years, and particularly, during the closing weeks of the presidential campaign.

As word of the Obama victory spread, so did exhilaration, spontaneous celebrations erupting in the streets of the Nation's Capital, akin to a post-Superbowl street party.  Most notable was the gathering of several hundred in Lafayette Park, directly across from the White House, under the very nose of not-a-minute-too-soon lame-duck President George Bush. Television perused the elated and often tearful faces of the President-elect's half-million plus supporters in Illinois' Grant Park, where the next  President had come to acknowledge his victory.  Joyful throngs in New York City's Times Square celebrated in the November night, reminiscent of New Year's Eve, minus the confetti.  

The faces of the Obama girls, Malia and Sasha, wore the rapture of Christmas morning as, together with their mother, Michelle, they joined their father on stage.  Undoubtedly, they barely slept when the celebration was over, but when the sandman finally prevailed, he probably came, not with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, but with dreams of the new puppy promised them by their parents, and confirmed by their Daddy just minutes into his first address as President-elect.  There's a certain comfort to be had in having at the helm of the most powerful nation on the planet a man so grounded that he sought, even in first blush of historic victory, to reassure his daughters of a promise remembered.  

President-elect Obama has repeatedly said that the genius of America is its capacity to change, to reinvent itself.  Obama's very election is testimony to that fact.  In raising Obama up to lead the American people, we ourselves are changed, and in the process of metamorphosis, have created a new paradigm, the ongoing success of which will require our faithful diligence.  The next President's mantra, "Yes, we can" is a mantle that rests gently on the shoulder we will indubitably be called upon to put to the wheel.  That this will require sacrifice, stamina and stick-to-it-ive-ness should not discourage us...After all, we already know we're up to the task. 

 

We can do it.  Yes, we can.

Two Chili Dogs And A Side Of Bank...

Throughout history, Switzerland has enjoyed a reputation for (1) Fine Chocolates, (2) Artisan Cheeses, (3) Julie Andrews' Alps and (4) Absolute Banking Confidentiality. For many years I was fortunate to pass some time there, indulging my taste for Teuscher truffles and Mont d'Or cheese, working off their effects while pursuing a passion for down-hill skiing in Gstaad. Sometimes I actually found time to do business behind the unlettered doors of Geneva's private banks.

If memory serves me correctly, a long-standing joke about Swiss bankers went like this...One spring day a banker spies a man in a threadbare suit groveling on all fours in Geneva's splendid Park des Eaux-Vives, eating the sweet green grass sprouting beneath him. Drawing near, the banker recognizes the man as one of his biggest investment clients. "Well, Messr. Charlot," the banker begrudgingly admits, "I suppose, under the circumstances, we could let you dip into principal!" The tale, oft-repeated by the very bankers at whose expense the joke was told, was thought LOL hilarious, given its proximity to the truth. Neither did it diminish the appetites of the maniacal guardians of the banks' purse-strings, who dined -at their clients' expense - on pate de foie gras and Dover sole over lunch at the fashionable Park's restaurant of the same name.

If only banks of all stripes had been somewhat circumspect in their dealings of late...

For all the wrong reasons, all sorts of banks have been very much in the news recently - Commercial Banks, Investment Banks, Community Banks, European Banks, U.K. Banks, Asian Banks, Central Banks - and the list goes on. It was not so long ago that banks were not places of interest to most people - save for when one needed one - and then of course, as the old saw went - one could only get a loan if you didn't need one.

All that changed in the mid-80's, when banks looked across the street and decided that the grass was greener on the other side. Suddenly, it wasn't enough for Commercial Banks to offer the boring, but safe vanilla services: making mortgages and loans; providing checking and savings accounts; offering certificates of deposit or commercial paper, et al.

These staid institutions, often built of stone to impress the public with the gravitas of their existence, woke up one day and decided they needed to be - sexy - like their Investment Banking cousins. That way, they argued, their profit margins would benefit from economies of scale and provide improved customer service. No longer would a customer have to walk across the street to make an investment transaction. Everybody would benefit by vertical integration - blurring the lines with one-stop shopping. And, oh by the way, the commercial banks would need government deregulation to accomplish this, to make it an even playing field with the investment banks, which largely had hoodwinked the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) that their, the economy's, and the nation's interests being identical, all would be best served through self-regulation. Soon they, too, would be able to sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money market funds, et al. with minimal interference and oversight. The foxes were effectively in charge of the hen house.

One more thing, all banks could now play the Wall Street equivalent of Grand Theft Auto through derivatives and what ultimately became the two-bit buzz-word of the boom (and bust). Credit-swaps. Can you say "Par -tay?"

If all this leaves your head spinning, it should: a mind no less brilliant than the castle's own Ben Bernanke, was clueless that the barbarians were at the gate, much less inside its walls...until Wall and Broad began running blood.

How differently we once looked at the impenetrable oracles of Wall Street. Just a few decades ago, I was a young fire-in-the-belly stockbroker with E.F. Hutton & Co., Inc. Within a few years of my joining the firm, John Latshaw, whose Kansas City, Mo. firm, Latshaw & Co. had been previously acquired by Hutton, was appointed the Region's VP. John was an imposing, elegant man whose exact altitude escapes me now, but at the time, I was in awe of the gentleman who traveled with his own bed-extender, since most hotel beds could not accommodate his John Wayne-like stature. Unlike some of Hutton's Big Apple hierarchy. "Big John," as he was (secretly) called, always came calling with words of encouragement, even when the Boardroom was littered with bodies.

A generous man, John always shared his market savvy; he loved banks, and thought everyone should own one. That was one of the man's charms: he would readily share with you what had worked for him, in the belief that it would also work for you. John said that any time you could buy a bank for less than its book value, jump on it. Subsequently, my Rolodex (the Stone-Age predecessor to BlackBerry) contained the names of happy clients who literally could laugh all the way to the bank.

Of course, that was then. In the past decade, as banks became enfants terribles of financial opacity, investing in them took on a whole new meaning, mostly mumbo-jumbo, the results of which are currently being declaimed in every corner of the globe.

On another of his visits, John rolled out the Latshaw philosophy of entertaining - Martha Stewart not having yet ascended to being the doyenne of that medium. I particularly remember John advising his guys (and this gal) always to offer guests the very best you could afford. People - clients, prospects, friends - everybody should be treated "special," John said. Elaborating, John remarked, that in those difficult times (The DJIA either only moved sideways or sank, when it moved at all.) if hot dogs were all you could afford to serve, then make them the best damn hot dogs money could buy!

Not surprisingly, I have acquired a repertoire of frankfurter brands and knowledge of the best hot dogs served across the country. As it turns out, given the current vicissitudes of the economy and the whipsawing arrhythmia of the market, this information is perfectly timed. Now is an excellent opportunity to take a bite out of one's favorite "dawg," be it Ball Park or an organic tofu faux frank.

Back to John's "Everyone should own a bank theory." Thanks to the Federal Reserve's insistence that at least 9 banks will receive an infusion of cash by the government, whether welcome, needed, or not, all of us now will, as tax-payers, become de-facto partial, if only temporary, "owners" of said banks without spending a dime. Bank of America, Citicorp, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank Of New York Mellon, are among the banks selected to receive a core infusion. Any other time, owning any of the aforementioned would be the stuff of dreams. Today we have to hope they don't become a nightmare.

It's not quite the scenario Big John had in mind when he made his recommendations so many years ago, but one has to move with the times. As for me, in this new, tighten-the-belt world we're going to be inhabiting, whether I'm dining out, or entertaining chez moi, I'll make mine
two chili-dogs, scorched, with a side of bank -er, beans.

What's in a Name?

The unyielding torturous roller-coaster of Wall Street continues to wreak havoc on the paper fortunes of the elite and hoi-polloi alike as the world becomes acclimated to seeing those fortunes fall to pieces. No one knows what kind of a monetary system we'll be left with when the dust settles; a bigger problem is that the dust may not settle for 15- 18 months or longer, since the once-invincible American consumer is now about to be "down on his uppers," and is in no mood/position to bail out a sinking ship - again. It's all over save for rearranging the deck chairs...

The question remains, what will our economic system be called in the wake of its virtual destruction and rebirth? "Capitalism" scarcely seems accurate when our banks are partially (and forcibly) owned by the Federal Government and when we have the enforced intervention - socialism - that the recent rescue/bailout imputes to the system. Since we now know "capitalism" really means those in charge of the capital have free license to run the economy into the ground, former and would-be "capitalists" may not want to cop to the name.

"Socialism," or collective ownership, has such a negative connotation to our Yankee ingenuity and inclinations, that even if the Federal Government were to nationalize feature film production - or Hollywood - we still could not accept the moniker, much less the reality.

Back in the dark ages of the 21st century I was a wet-behind-the ears account executive with the Wall Street firm E.F. Hutton & Co., Inc., founded by actress Dina Merrill's father, Edward F. Hutton. It was common knowledge around the firm that when Ms. Merrill, daughter of Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, AKA Marjorie Merriweather Post Close Hutton Davies May, informed her father that she was going to become an actress, the enraged financier, in a pique of anger, purportedly told her, "No daughter of mine will sully the name of Hutton upon the stage!"

Whereupon Ms. Merrill, in the ultimate game of one-upmanship, took the name of her father's fiercest rival, Charles Merrill (yes, the on-and-same Merrill of Merrill Lynch which was recently subsumed into Bank Of America). Thus was christened Dina Merrill of stage and screen fame.

Considering that the wire-house E.F. Hutton long ago disappeared, and that the name of Merrill Lynch is also now history, it's worth noting that Ms. Merrill, who will celebrate her 83rd birthday in December, is still thriving. When all is said and done, the institutions founded by the mighty - all of them men - have foundered. Yet Dina soldiers on.

Perhaps we can take a leaf from Dina Hutton Merrill's durability when it comes to our forthcoming metamorphosis and come through the process with style and grace. Neither a Capitalistic nor Socialist system, perhaps we'd fare better as a Dinastic one. After all, what's in a name? A system by any other would smell as sweet.