Goodwill In Skyscraper National Park April 20, 2023April 19, 2023 I bought more UNIT at $3.50 yesterday. The same caveats apply as before at $4.70, only now — if they can maintain it — the 60-cent dividend works out to a 17% yield. Raymond James issued a “strong buy” March 1 while lowering its price target from $12 to $8 because of the rise in interest rates. Here they offer a company overview. If inflation continues to ebb and interest rates edge down over the next couple of years, it should work out. If they rise, we could have a fat tax loss. Another high-yielding speculation would be CHRB, senior notes geared to pay off their $25 face value in about three years . . . and promising 8.5% a year on that face value in the meantime. I bought some yesterday in my IRA at $13.50 with money I can truly (if begrudgingly) afford to lose. If all goes well, we get $25 when the notes are redeemed plus $6 along the way, so $31 on a $13.50 investment. You know how dangerous Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan is. Jim Jordan is so alarmed he moved his whole committee up here to do what he apparently thinks Ohio voters sent him to Washington to do. Business Insider’s take: Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan holds Manhattan hearing to blast DA’s record on crime despite 73% higher murder rate at home. Garrison Keillor is less concerned. As he recently reflected on his stroll through Central Park: . . . The constant social interactions of urban life tend to erode the sharper edges of lunacy. There may be secret QAnon cells in brownstone basements in Brooklyn but the Qs need to ride the B and C trains with the rest of us and the gentle jostling and the respect for each other’s space must give them a sense of being part of a civilized whole. I grew up among fundamentalists who taught us to avoid unbelievers — alienation being necessary to maintain our worldview — but it was not possible to maintain this. We weren’t shepherds, we were shopkeepers and shipping clerks, we needed to exercise good manners and engage in amiable small talk, and these daily details turn out to be as important as overarching ideology. . . . The paranoia of conspiracy theories strikes a person as perverse when you look back at the Depression my parents went through, or visit the Tenement Museum in New York or Ellis Island and get a glimpse of what immigrants found when they arrived. Farm life in New England in the 19th century was so miserable, men by the thousands flocked to seaports to sign up for whaling expeditions. Dressed in oilskins, they stood aboard the ship in heavy seas and hacked the blubber off the monsters as they were hauled up and threw it in an oven to cook down into whale oil, the deck slippery, blades honed razor sharp, men sliding around as the ship pitched and rolled, and if one slid overboard he was likely eaten by sharks. The smallest man on the crew was lowered into the whale’s mouth to harvest the baleen to make buggy whips and corset stays. It was no work for the faint of heart. . . . Scripture says to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself, and this is clear as can be walking around Central Park among the cherry blossoms, the runners, the families — you notice how a little kid dashes away from his parents for about twenty feet and then turns to check their whereabouts. They are the center of his world. My sweetie and I hold hands, we’re a part of this enormous tract of goodwill in the middle of Skyscraper National Park. People in South Dakota may imagine New York as a hellhole of violence and corruption, and if this gives them comfort, fine, but we’re here and it’s April and everyone in our sight feels lucky to be here together. Shouldn’t we all be able to calm down, reach reasonable compromises, and live together? Putin hopes not. And you know who admires Putin.