The Paradox of Shareholder Value

Our Clandestine Corporate Lair

Today is our annual shareholder meeting, here at our clandestine corporate lair. The board of directors will be meeting in the morning, followed by a presentation to shareholders of our company stock. Typically, the crowd is made up of 30-40 elderly, former employees who live in the area and have nothing better to do in their retirement. It is essentially a rah, rah presentation by my Dark Corporate Overlords, for the handful of loyal retirees that choose to show up.

So, in honor of this annual event, I would like to take a few minutes to explain what it is that I think is wrong with the concept of the shareholder owned corporation. Please forgive the long, dry rant that follows…

In large public corporations such as our Sinister Cabal, the company is “owned” by thousands of different shareholders. As such, it would be impractical for each owner to participate in the decision making of the corporation. Therefore, the shareholders of our stock have an elected board of directors to oversee the management team, and the operation of the company on behalf of all owners (ie. shareholders). The ownership of one share of company stock entitles the shareholder to one vote in the election of the board of directors. Therefore, effective control over the board of directors rests with the majority shareholder, or groups of shareholders acting in concert.

In the case of our fine corporation, employees are given the opportunity to own shares in the company stock through their retirement funds, or through outright purchase of company stock using pretax dollars. In addition to the employee stock holders, wholesale institutional investors, like large mutual funds, will typically buy and sell shares of our company stock as part of their investment portfolios.

In theory, this seems like an excellent example of the principle of economic subsidiarity, whereby the workers share in ownership of the capital. The theory of economic subsidiarity, as described by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Centisimus Annus, proposes that “Each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part owner of the workbench where he is working with everyone else”. By having the employees participate as shareholders of the corporation, the employees become part owners of the corporation’s capital, and also share in the profits of the business through the payment of stock dividends. Also, in theory, the corporate management team can be held responsible by a legal fiduciary responsibility to the employee shareholders. This is what is commonly known as principal-agent theory, where the management team acts as an agent in the interests of the principal, or shareholders.

However, somewhere between theory and practice there is a disconnect. While workers share in the ownership of company as stockholders, and retain the voting rights of all shareholders, they do not have a direct say in the management decision making. Their say in management decision making is via proxy through the elected board of directors. Shareholders have a percentage of votes equal to the percentage of shares they own, so if the majority of shareholders agree that the management are performing poorly they can elect a new board of directors, which can then hire a new management team. In practice, however, genuinely contested board elections are rare. Board candidates are usually nominated by insiders on the management team, and by the board of the directors themselves, and a considerable amount of stock is held and voted by both the board members and the management team. The employee shareholder’s voting rights often represent such a small percentage of the total that they can be considered negligible.

Ultimately, those who most influence the direction of a company are the management team, the board of directors, and the large institutional investors that hold and manage the employee shares in mutual funds. Each of these three constituencies have different motivations, and incentives.

The Management Team

The management team of any large corporation is tasked with both short term and long-term decision making to support the mission of the business and deliver the financial results demanded by the investors so that they may realize a financial return on their investment. Unlike a Democratically elected government, the management team is not a group elected by the vote of equals. In addition, unlike a family owned business, the management team is not selected based on class, or family connections. Instead, the management team is a group of leaders that have risen to positions of management through their promotion by higher-ranking managers within the organization. The focus of the professional manager as an agent for the shareholder is improving efficiency. The motivation is to maintain continued investment through the increase in share price. The management teams of most large corporations have a significant amount of their financial compensation in the form of stock option grants. Therefore, an increase in share price will directly affect the material wealth of the management team.

The Institutional Investor

In the United States at the end of 1992, institutional investors held at least 50 percent of the share capital of large corporations. I believe that figure has grown in the last 17 years. As the owner of the capital the institutional investor is free to purchase, hold, or sell the stock of any given publicly traded company in the interest of creating profit for the shareholders of the mutual fund. Institutional investment firms employ professional fund managers to manage the stock portfolios in line with the investment strategy (long-term growth, international growth, moderate growth, or securities).  While Institutional investors are legally the principal “owners” of the capital they invest, in reality the fund manager is acting as a trustee of the money belonging to the mutual fund shareholders. The mutual fund manager is not a principal, but merely an agent for the shareholders of the mutual fund corporation. Mutual fund companies earn their profit by selling individual shares in their funds, and charging fees to their customers for the management of the stock funds. The typical investor in mutual fund stocks, are individuals who purchase the stock either using their own money, or through company supported 401k and retirement pension funds. As the market value of a mutual fund stock is directly related to the performance of the fund, the institutional investor is highly incentivized to maximize his return on investment by buying stock in companies that show growth in earnings. To the institutional investor, the only thing that matters is the near term financial performance of the company in which he invests.

Our Board of Directors

The Board of Directors

The third constituency is the board of directors of the corporation. The boards of directors are professional managers from other organizations that have been elected to sit on the board, and protect the interests of all shareholders. Board members are elected by shareholders to represent their interests. In this role, the board members serve as the acting principals for the shareholders. In practice, most board members are chosen from among the peer group of the corporate management team, and boards are typically composed of either large shareholders, or professional managers from other corporations. The result is that the board of directors, and corporate management team become a self-perpetuating group of elite insiders. Both are financially compensated by the performance of the company stock, which is positively impacted by attracting the investment of large institutional investors. As described above, the best way to attract institutional investment is to deliver continuous growth in corporate financial earnings.

The irony in this ownership system is that the mutual fund stocks making up the largest percentage of a corporation’s shareholders are typically owned by many employee shareholders. These employee shareholders are employed by many different companies, and acquire their mutual fund stock through employee 401k retirement and pension funds. While financial returns are important to the individual shareholder, other concerns such as job security, working conditions, environmental impact, and long-term health benefits have an immediate impact on both their subjective and material well-being. The illusion is that making employees into shareholders through stock ownership & pension funds gives them a voice.

The rise of the mutual fund, and pension fund as the primary owner of financial capital has created demand for continuous growth and increasing profit to increase short term earnings per share.  The result is a paradox where the jobs held by employee stockholders in developed nations are eliminated in an effort to reduce operational costs related to salary and benefit expenses. By moving these skilled, and unskilled, jobs to developing countries the cost of producing goods is reduced, in pursuit of increasing the financial performance of the stock price, and creating profits for both the management team, the board of directors, and ultimately the retirement pension funds of the very employees whose jobs were eliminated. The new employees in the developing countries are not typically given access to employee stock ownership, or pension funds.

The result is a paradox where jobs are eliminated to secure the future retirement income of the employees holding them. This reminds me of the Vietnam era quote “We must destroy the village in order to save it”. Obviously, the current state of corporate governance under shareholder theory only holds management accountable for short term financial results. Clearly the gap between long term and short term incentives for corporate management teams do not serve the interests of all shareholders, particularly the employee shareholders.

Employee Shareholders hard at work in the Lair

Does this mean that all corporations are governed only for short term stock price gains? No, I am not cynical enough to suggest that. Yet. However, it is clear that the management team is only given short term incentives, and that any view to the long term stewardship of the corporation on their part is purely of a personal initiative and desire, and will not be rewarded by the corporate governance system. Is it any wonder we continue to see fraud, and ethical violations at publicly held corporations?

How can this system be changed? Well, currently the corporate governance laws are written such that unless a gross fraud is being committed on the part of management, or accounting laws are being violated, there is no recourse for shareholders to hold management accountable for the long term operation of a corporation. The only business models that I have seen have success in this, do not fall into the category of stockholder owned corporations. They are usually privately held, family owned business, or cooperatives owned solely by the coop members.

Until corporate governance laws are revisited in a meaningful way, the corporate overlords will continue their reign of darkness, and wage slaves like myself will continue to serve them in their nefarious deeds. Innocent people will continue to scratch, and claw out their living as a small part of a largely unjust machine, that seems to run on it’s own accord. Rare is the organization that is evil, or corrupt to the core. Such infamous folks as Madoff, Petters, Rigas, Skilling, and their ilk are thankfully rare.  When their pyramid shemes finally do collapse, their is always much hand wringing, and finger pointing, but seldom do we truly analyze the underlying structure of shareholder theory of the supposedly ethical corporations.

What is truly scandalous is the corporate governance system that we have created, which concentrates the power and wealth in elite circles. It is this system that encourages and rewards the self serving behavior of corporate management teams, and drains the wealth and capital from the communities in which we live. It is shareholder value which feeds the beast of globalization, and lines the pockets of the few, at the expense of the many. If only this kind of evil had a face, it would be so much easier to fight. Instead we are powerless against this faceless, formless, Leviathan of a corporate system. I fear that not even the power of government can control this transnational beast any longer. James Bond, where are you?

My Villianous Liege

On writing

There are some days a guy just doesn’t feel like writing. And then there are some weeks that are a succession of such days strung together in a row. This is one of them.

So, I could take a day off, but my creative writing professor, or maybe someone I once read, said “Writer’s write”, and it is hard to argue with such simple and straightforward logic. So I will continue to persist in my delusion of being a writer by writing whether I feel like it or not. Which leaves me flailing about today for a subject. So rather than fall back on the old trusted blogging standby of saying “Look here! Someone somewhere else has something interesting to say!”, or the equally effective repetition of what I had for lunch today, I will address the subject of writing.

Today’s guilty confession: It was my dream to be a writer.

Yes, I wanted to be a writer. Not just any kind of writer, but one of those big important types that write books that people like to say they read, lest they be deemed light weight. You know, the kind of author that ends up in Contemporary American Literature syllabus’, not the kind who’s books  ends up in the checkout line at the Supermarket. There was just one problem with that plan. Talent, or the lack thereof.

Then there was this other consideration. Pragmatism. I have always been a guy who tries to get the most for the least amount of effort. Some call this efficiency. I call it laziness. In this particular instance, I started down a road to be a Mechanical Engineer in the hope of landing a job that would pay well, and become a career. Not out of any love for mechanical things, or desire to do whatever it is that engineers so. Purely out of the desire for the stability and security of a steady income.

Well, in a somewhat reverse Faustian bargain, I did eventually succeed to sell my soul for a relatively safe, steady, and unremarkable career in Engineering. Mission accomplished. Although along the way I realized, relatively quickly I might add, that I had no aptitude for it. Sitting in my engineering classes in my Senior year, I knew that I was lacking something that the other students had, a passion for the numbers, and science. Instead, I had a passion for literature, and psychology, and the human condition. If I had played to my strengths I would have gone into a liberal arts program, and pursued a doctorate in English Lit, or Philosophy. Instead, I made that fateful Faustian bargain, and saw the Mechanical Engineering degree through to it’s conclusion out of pragmatism. I also must admit it was out of fear of admitting failure, and having to start over. (I hates to lose.)

So I soldiered through, and tried to carve my little niche out of the engineering world, by being the practical project engineer. The guy that found a way to run a project and coordinate the work of others to get things done. I soon discovered that I had a talent for it, mostly because I could move in both the technical world of engineering, and the absurd world of management, and communicate with them both. So I made a career out of being an interpreter, and working in the middle. I also discovered a knack for quickly analyzing processes, and systems, and finding ways to circumvent them. This is a talent that is necessary if one is ever to accomplish anything in a corporate environment. Despite the best of intentions, all processes and systems exist to thwart the efforts of the organization to accomplish their goals.

It was this talent that led me straight into the ranks of middle management, where I have become comfortably ensconced as a willing vassal of my dark corporate overlords. Oddly enough, I am not fulfilled. So I dusted off my dream, and began writing. Well, if you can call this writing.  I have no idea where this blog is taking me, but so far I have enjoyed the ride. I hope you are too.

 

Hell’s Kitchen

The great kitchen remodel of 2009 is continuing apace at 20 Prospect. We are doing our part to single handedly re-invigorate the local economy, through our spending of 20 Prospect Stimulus Dollars on new cabinets, floors, fixtures, and appliances. So if you notice a bump in the economic figures for Minnesota, rest assured, we are behind it.

Actually, the main reason behind the remodel was to reduce our carbon footprint, by installing less energy intensive appliances, and replacing the garbage can with an indoor, self composting, disposal. Not really. Neither the local economy, nor the environment had anything to do with this project.

Our home was built in 1959, and came equipped with a very modern kitchen. It had a built in oven, and range top, in a classic 1950’s style, complete with pocket doors leading into the dining and living room, to shield the guests from the noise and splatter from the kitchen I guess. Perhaps in the 50’s housewives were still beheading the chickens right there in the kitchen, so the doors served as a way to keep the headless chickens from running through the house.

Mrs. 20 Prospect in the Kitchen - Sure wish she wouldn't smoke that corncob pipe in the house...

When we bought our home in 1995, we planned to remodel the kitchen, but one thing led into another, and the kitchen project kept getting bumped for other more urgent projects. It was functional enough to serve us well, but we were wanting for more. More cabinet, more counter top, more debt. Finally, after 14 years we decided it was now or never.

just kidding... here is the real Mrs. 20 Prospect hard at work.

So in October the project began by gutting the 1950’s era kitchen. For the past month the 20 prospect clan has been living in our basement family room, cooking outdoors on the grill, and Coleman stove, and eating around the card table just like the pioneers. Well, minus the Indian attacks.

After 4 weeks of work, it is finally coming together. If all goes well, we will have running water, and appliances by Thanksgiving. Just in time for Squanto and the tribe to come by for dinner. Actually, now that I think about it, this is Squanto’s year for hosting. So I guess we’ll be having the Turkey buffet at the Casino instead.

I love our little 50’s suburban Rambler. It is just so dang functional, that despite the house envy we get from time to time, it’s hard to imagine me and the Mrs. ever moving. It might get a bit tight at times, but to be honest, the chillun’ are half grown already, and it won’t be long and we will be sending them off to college, and watching them move out and start a life on their own (fingers crossed as I type this). And then the place will seem roomy again, for a couple of empty nesters. But what a fine kitchen we’ll have.

Oh Lucy! I'm home!

The Brickhouse Revisited

As I mentioned, this past weekend was “guys weekend” which meant sports, sports, sports. The highlight of the weekend was a trip to the new on campus stadium of the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team. It was their final homegame of the innagural season for the new birckhouse, and their opponents were the hated “Jackrabbits” of South Dakota State.

Well, hated is a strong word for a team that most Gopher fans had never heard of. No offense to SDSU, but those initials usually mean San Diego State. The Jackrabbits have a fine program, and a fine team, but they are a I-AA school, and not exactly a marque matchup.

Luckily the Gophers did their part to welcome them to the new stadium by playing some of the ugliest football I have seen in quite some time. They eeeked out a victory, but neither team looked especially determined to win that game. But enough words, it time for pictures!!!!

The crowd began arriving early for the 11am kickoff

The stadium has been tied into the area very nicely. It’s open end just bekons you inside. Sitting across the street from the Basketball and Hockey Arena’s it really is a boon to the Stadium Village Neighborhood, and the local bars, restaurants, etc… seem to be thriving on the foot traffic.

Umm... does your wife know you're dressed like that?

The view from the East Endzone (student section)

I love the big open plaza behind the West Endzone

The Ginormous Scoreboard

March on, march on, to victory, loyal sons of the varsity!!!!

Go Gopher Victory...

All in all, I have to say they did the place up right. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the plastic grass, but I’m willing to overlook that. And I am not even going to get into the ethics of spending public money on sports stadiums, or the exploitation of student atheletes in major college athletics. No, I just came to see a football game in the great outdoors, the way that God intended. And I did not go home disappointed.

TCF Bank Stadium at the golden hour

Hanging out on the Porch

Another week begins on the Front Porch. I have to say that the past one was exhausting. I spent a lot of time diving deep in the sea of memory, and I’m afraid I have a case of the bends. So this week is starting off a little light on the memory side.

Old Friends on the Porch

This past weekend I was honored to have an old friend stop by 20 Prospect for a visit. Yes, it was time for a “guy’s weekend”, which means trips to sporting events, and bars, and partaking of smelly foods that the wife and kids don’t like to eat.  If either one of us were into hunting and fishing, we’d have done some of that too.

The “guys weekend” is something I never remember the Dad’s of a previous generation doing. Just like our Mom’s and Grandma’s never had a girls weekend get-a-way to Vegas. I guess it’s just a generational thing, another result of the atomization of social ties, and the increasing mobility of the population. I have known Chris since Kindergarten, when he arrived in Batavia after his family relocated from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is my oldest bestest friend, but we haven’t lived in the same town since he left the Twin Cities in ‘95. Now we see each other about every other year, sometimes with wife and kids, sometimes alone. But no matter how much time passes, when we are together we’re reduced to two kids sitting on the front steps talking until the street lights flicker on.

 

 

Land of 10,000 Hits

 

20 Prospect reached a milestone yesterday. We welcomed our 10,000^th visitor to this front porch. Well, in web speak, it was the 10,000^th “hit” to this humble little blog, which could mean several things. Either the 10 people that read these musings like have an itchy trigger finger, or several thousand unsuspecting souls followed this little off ramp down from the internet, stopped for a second, looked around, harrumphed and pulled back up onto the information super highway spraying dust and gravel all over the front steps. The hell with ‘em I say!

10,000 is 10,000 and I’m calling it a milestone and a great excuse to gaze at my navel again. I have to say I sure have enjoyed the chance to foist my half formed thoughts and ramblings onto an unsuspecting world. When I started this web-log thingy, I had no idea where it was going to take me. It had been 15 years since I kept a journal on a regular basis, and the thought of cutting open a vein 5 days a week in front of God and country was simultaneously thrilling, and intimidating. What would I write about? I didn’t want to create yet another website devoted to telling the world what the author had for lunch. So instead, I created a site devoted to telling the world what the author had for lunch one afternoon in 1988.

I must say, it was a damn fine lunch. Seriously though, I had no idea if anyone would find 20 Prospect, much less read it, so I have to say I am truly humbled to have had you here on my porch to visit. I hope I can continue to find new and embarrassing things to write about on this blog, and I hope you all continue to come by to read them. Further proof that with a world of information at our fingertips, we can still piss away the afternoon slacking on the front porch. And if that doesn’t inspire hope for the future of our civilization, I’m not sure what will.

Our Ladies of Perpetual Hope

Photo copyright randmkaos @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/randmkaos/3084904767/

They have been there forever. Sometimes I wonder if they were there before the church was built. From my first day as an altar boy in the 4^th grade, I can remember them, sitting out in the darkened pews before 7:00am mass, praying silently on their rosary beads as I went about my chores getting the altar ready. Setting out the water and the wine, lighting the candles, waiting for the nicotine smell of Father coming in from the rectory to turn on the lights. I could see them out there in the darkness, stiff as statues, silently rubbing their wrinkled hands over the time worn beads, their lips moving slightly to the imperceptible repetition of the prayers.

I always seemed to draw the 7 am mass, not because of an affinity for rising before dawn, but because Fr. Fred knew my Mom could be counted on to get me there. I hated being woken from the warmth of my bed before the sun had risen, and be driven to St. Joe’s to serve. Sleepily buttoning my black cassock, and pulling a white surplus over my head, I would go about my rounds fifteen minutes before Mass was due to start, but already they were there. They were always there.

I served for six years, until I was so tall the altar boys cassacks no longer fit. By the time I stopped, I had grown from a shy fourth grader into an awkward teenager. My schedule was taken up with practices, and high school sports, and I was embarrassed to be seen by girls at Sunday Mass. Quitting was a relief. Mass had become tedious to me. Something I did by rote. The mystery of the ritual, and the tradition had long since grown stale, and  become yet another thing I slept walked through, like preparing the altar in the pre-dawn dark. Surely those old woman sitting out there in the pews were sleep walking too. How else could they be there, day after day, repeating the prayers, and reliving the mysteries for literal decades.

As I grew older, I drifted further and further away from the faith, until a funny thing happened. As I turned thirty, and began a family of my own I started returning. Slowly at first, but eventually with deeper and deeper hunger to understand. Not just to sleep walk through the mysteries, but to understand them intellectually, and spiritually. Like a diver swimming at a great depth, I could sense a lightness above me, and I began to swim toward it.

Sometimes lethargy overcomes me, and I need to consciously shake myself from sleep to overcome it, but I have returned to the surface of the faith now, and I can’t see myself ever straying from it again. One day, entering the Chapel early for an Ash Wednesday service, I was startled to see them. There they were, as old as I remembered them. Kneeling and sitting quietly in the dark, counting the prayers as if they had never left.

In St. Joseph’s, St. Anthony’s, St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart, and in churches far beyond Batavia, they still kneel in the dark, praying. They are older now, which is hard to imagine, as they seemed ancient then. Stoop shouldered from years of carrying around the weight of their families on their backs, they have suffered long, and silently. They have watched their children fade, and disappear, from the pews beside them, like swimmers slipping beneath the waves. They have buried parents, husbands, children, and even grandchildren, but still they come each morning to kneel and pray. Sitting there quietly in the dark, their fingers work slowly on their rosaries. Knitting their prayers together, one bead at a time, until the mysteries reach like fishing lines, stretching back through the cold, dark years, their crosses like hooks glistening in the predawn candlelight, tethering us to a past we have long since forgotten, if we ever truly knew it.

Photo Copyright Daily Vis @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/njssli23/2178773493/

Experiments in Napping

Hypnos and Thanatos, Sleep and His Half Brother Death by John William Waterhouse

As I mentioned before, the Fall of my Sophomore year at Clarkson began with a singular focus on my studies. It had been a strange, and interesting summer, and I was ready to leave Batavia behind and finally commit all of myself to college. I no longer had a girlfriend, only the mere pretense of one, and I had decided that moping about being stuck in the snow bound North Country would accomplish nothing.

I was rooming with Scott on the second floor of Reynolds House. As sophomores, we were isolated and left behind in the freshman dorms due to our poor lottery numbers. Surrounded by the silly idiocy of the next bumper crop of uninhibited, thickheaded freshman, we did the only thing we could do. We packed our books into our backpacks and went to the library to study.

My existence was downright monastic that year. What time I spent in the room was just to sleep, and study. Sitting under my loft bed, in the fluorescent white glow of my desk lamp I was alone in my cave, pouring over books on Statics, Mechanics, Differential Equations, and all of the other 2nd year courses that distinguished me as a Mechanical Engineering major. Scott for his part was seldom to be seen. When he wasn’t at the library he was hanging out in Chris or Dan’s dorm rooms, leaving me alone in our room with his stereo and CD collection.

Living out this solitary existence went as follows. Get up, go to class at 8 am. Return to dorm room. Eat lunch. Return to the science center for afternoon class. Return to dorm in late afternoon. Nap. Dinner, followed by 3-4 hours of study, then an hour of sitting in someone’s room b.s. ing, and unwinding in front of a television. Go to bed and repeat.

Remarkably, it was even less exciting than it sounds. My grades climbed through out that year until my GPA peaked at a 3.8. I am still damn proud of that achievement, and amazed that I managed to accomplish it. But this post isn’t about my engineering studies. It is about my naps.

Yes, I know, a story about naps, how exciting. Please, control yourself.

These late afternoon naps weren’t just about falling asleep. They were an experiment. Being tired, and having my head swimming with high level math and science, I would walk back down the hill from the Science Center in the late afternoon overcast, drop my books on my desk, put a CD into the stereo, and then climb up into the warmth of my bed.

I would then proceed to drift off to sleep, trying to keep from completely losing consciousness. If I managed it well I could enter into a state of lucid dreaming, where I was neither awake, nor asleep, but somewhere in the middle. Hovering there in semi-consciousness, I was aware of the music playing on the stereo, and voices in the hallway, but only marginally so. The other half of my brain was wandering, following thoughts into a dreamlike land where reality, and imagination were tough to distinguish.

I would much later learn that the phenomenon is known as lucid dreaming, and that many people have experimented with, and studied it. At the time though, I had just stumbled upon it accidentally. I didn’t want to set an alarm for dinner, so I tried to never completely lose my sense of time. Instead I just drifted off.

No, I was not taking drugs. In fact, I hardly drank at all that year, being far too consumed in my studies. My only altered state became these naps, where I would lose myself for an hour, and wake refreshed, and energized and ready to study again.

My experiments only lasted for that year. The following year I was rooming in a suite, with 5 others, and their was little time, and or quiet to nap around the place. In later years I tried on occasion to find my way back into that state, but have never managed it. I either lose consciousness completely, and wake hours later feeling awful, or am unable to ever let go of consciousness and float through those borderlands of dream.

Perhaps it was some anomaly of the developing, young adult brain, brought on by a focus on numbers and abstract mathematical concepts. Perhaps it was a function of the surroundings, the afternoon gloaming, the bed 2 feet from the ceiling, and the ever present muffled voices coming from the hall. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I felt that those experiments in napping were responsible in some part for the way I was able to totally devote myself to the complexity of my engineering classes, and excel at them without losing my mind. This was in a time before I had found poetry, literature, or theology to balance the two halves of my brain.

In any case, when the sun begins to set earlier, and earlier this time of year, and the darkness begins to creep into the corners of my mind, I think back to those naps and the peace they brought me. As the painting at the beginning of the post, by John William Waterhouse reminds us, sleep is the half brother of death. I often wonder if death holds such lucid dreaming, but I am not sure I am quite ready to find out the answer.

Saint Kohoutek

Photo Copyright - Victor Nuno @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/victornuno/22886588/

The wind has died and the stars are breaking through the haze of city lights. Sixty degrees at eight o’clock in the evening, and I am breaking a sweat in my coat. The dog trots ahead in the darkness, weaving across yards, following the scents of hidden creatures that have passed this way before. We round the corner and climb the hill, past the Russian Orthodox Skete tucked into the row of ramblers and split levels, distinguished only by the incongruence of the wooden gate, and the small Orthodox cross atop the roof. The dog sniffs out the wild garden growing in the front yard, and somewhere in the darkness, the burning eyes of icons watch us pass. My breath grows heavy, and my footsteps slow as we climb the hill.

Above the stars strain to shine through, and I try to make out the familiar shapes of constellations. Here in the city the figures of men and animals are incomplete specks of light, waiting for a divine hand to sweep away the screen of city light that keeps them hidden like sacred mysteries. I have seen the priests before, taking out their trash, looking like anachronisms in their long gray beards. How did they end up half a world away from their Russian home, on this frozen prairie? Three hundred years after Hennepin and the Jesuits, they have come to minister to a hand full of immigrants trying to hold onto their past. We pass in the dark, silent as savages.

My eyes surrender to the haze, and my mind wanders back down to the streets around us. The windows of homes glow with the flickering blue of televisions, and honey yellow incandescence. The dog pauses, and whines at something hidden, still as an icon in the shadows. I listen, but there is only the chant of cars passing on the highway. I give the leash a shake and we continue on our round.

How many seasons has it been? How many times have we circled these streets through the exile of winter, the soft promise of spring, the erotic embrace of summer, and the warm parting kiss of autumn? Sniffing the scents on the night air, listening to the rustle of leaves and the hollow call of owls, searching the branches of oaks for their silhouettes.  We repeat this journey like pilgrims, returning again to search the sky for the answers surely hidden behind the sheltering heavens.

Welcome to Anoka County USA

Another activity filled weekend at 20 Prospect. We are in the midst of the fall sports season, so the weekend was spent chanting dark incantations around the pool with the swimming cult, and sacrificing small animals to the hockey God’s at the SuperRink-TM.

Lil’ Miss 20 Prospect had another swim meet this weekend, in the far flung northern reaches of Anoka County, “Home of the Mullet Since 1982″. Anoka, or “El Norte” as some call it, is what can best be described as an “Ex-urban” area, meaning it is a rural county that in the last 10-15 years has become home to more and more suburbanites, looking for cheap land to build starter castles. The result is a bizarre amalgamation of soccer Mom’s, and bait shops.

To Twin Citians, Anoka is synomous with the redneck lifestyle. Our late governor, Jesse “the Mouth” Ventura, won Anoka handily during his surprise election. Which should not have surprised anyone, as professional wrestling is right in the Anoka County wheelhouse.

Of course, as a contrairian, I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for Anoka County. Living in the far southern fringe of the county, I have some affiliation with it. Although I lack the snowmobiles, and pickup truck required to make me a true Anokan, I compensate by using my wardrobe of acid wash jeans, and Slayer T-shirts to fit in. Anoka County gets a lot of grief, and folks look down their snooty noses at it, but I have to say most residents I have met love the place, and don’t much care what some yuppified resident of Minneapolis thinks of us. Besides, Slayer Rawks!

I am proud to report that lil’ Miss 20 P lowered her personal best times in all of her events on Saturday. Which was a relief, as I hate to make her sleep in the dog’s crate when she doesn’t. I know, parenting is all about tough love. She has to learn the tough lessons, that Mommy and Daddy don’t love slow kids. That’s just what good parents do. (Relax. I’m kidding!) No, she swam her little heart out, and we were very proud, not just because of her times, but because of how hard she worked to achieve it.

Now we are torn. Do we let her swim the 2012 Games in London, at age 12, or do we hold her back to the 2016 games in Rio? Sure, 12 is young to be in the Olympics, but her coaches know a guy who can fake the necessary documents. It would be a good experience for her, and help her to be prepared when Rio comes around and she is favored to win the Gold. Man, swim parenting is all about tough decisions. Agassi’s Dad had it easy.

As for 20 Prospect Jr., he will be leaving us soon for a great Canadian boarding school that focuses on developing those all important hockey skills, like fighting. That’s the problem with the youth game in the U.S. All these mamby-pamby soccer Mom’s have taken the toughness out of the sport. They make the kids wear facemasks for cryin’ out loud! How are they going to learn to fight if they can’t hit each other in the face? It’s no wonder we haven’t won Gold since 1980.

So as you can see, life is busy at 20 Prospect now that the Front Porch has been packed up for the winter. So forgive the short post today. Our regularly scheduled pathetic prose, poor punctuation, and embarrasing stories resume tomorrow.