Reading Assignment For The Weekend -- March 12, 2020

I've not read the entire article yet. This is one article I want to read slowly and carefully for a number of reasons. It was sent to me by a reader who is credible and trustworthy. The reader says he has a 30-year history of working in the financial services industry, to include NYC.

The article is a Rolling Story article. Interestingly enough, the current issue of the Rolling Issue also has an article in line with Trump's analysis of the coronavirus pandemic: don't panic.

An aside: Maher is looking more and more credible every day.

The article is about Goldman Sachs. Maybe more later.

Matt Taibbi, the writer of the article: one may want to read the wiki entry to get some background.

By the way, this is an article I cannot read while doing other things; it's one of those articles that demands my full attention, so I will read it when I won't get any interruptions.

Break, break.

Between 2002 and 2004, or thereabouts, I was deployed to northern England multiple times to support the USAF intel mission. It was an incredibly turbulent time in general (9/11 shortly before the deployments began) and for me personally. There were two activities that I treasured on those deployments.

I had weekends entirely free, something I rarely experienced in the US Air Force during my 30-year-and-1-day career. I took advantage of that by walking the Yorkshire countryside near the Scottish border for twelve hours on Saturday and somewhat less on Sunday. It was beautiful and peaceful but by the end of the walks I was generally exhausted, especially on Saturday. I would leave about 7:00 a.m. and return about 7:00 p.m. I think I've blogged about this before. There were some evenings I did not think I had the energy to walk the last mile. I had no access to news, no access to anything. It was a solitary walk. I carried a portable Walkman CD player and played Hank Williams over and over and over. I carried that one CD on those walks.

The other wonderful memory I had was "Evensong." I forget what day of the week I attended "Evensong." It was always a weekend evening. Harking back to a few key memories I do believe "Evensong" that I attended in the wonderful Ripon Cathedral was on Sunday evening. Don't hold me to that. It is impossible to articulate how calm, how restful, Evensong was.


It's interesting: both Rush Limbaugh (radio) and the PGA Players tournament (television) have just begun for the day. Generally, I eagerly look forward to both. By now, I would be enjoying either one or the other both at the same time. Today, as they say, for me they don't hold a candle to Franz Schubert.

Franz Peter Schubert: German: 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828. An Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime -- do the math, he died at age 31 -- Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of piano and chamber music.