Postcards: One Day Blow

With the markets red... let's remember baseball... writing... and the people who shape you. Remember where you come from... one metaphor at a time. ͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­͏   ­ Forwarded this email? [Subscribe here]() for more You are a free subscriber to Postcards from the Florida Republic. To upgrade to paid and receive the daily Republic Risk Letter, [subscribe here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Postcards: One Day Blow]( With the markets red... let's remember baseball... writing... and the people who shape you. Remember where you come from... one metaphor at a time. [Garrett {NAME}]( Apr 17   [READ IN APP](   Market Update: Interest rates are rising, but the higher low portion of our momentum channel is in full effect. Stay patient and vigilant, as the 2-year US Treasury bond is in really scary territory at roughly 5%. The Fed will inevitably engage in Yield Curve Control - with actions taken as soon as May. That will change how capital is allocated - and likely spur some optimism about liquidity and markets through 2025. Energy and materials are recovering today despite the downturn in both oil and gold. There are still simmering tensions at the moment around Iran and Israel. There remains a lot of upside in oil should things turn sideways… but we’re not there just yet. “You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.” - HL Mencken. Dear Fellow Expat: Imagine - if you will - my teenage self… standing before a room of similar-aged boys and reciting Mending Wall by Robert Frost. It’s like something out of Dead Poets Society. ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it where there are cows? But here, there are no cows.’ This was my senior-year AP English Language and Composition course, taught by [Doctor Vincent Fitzpatrick]( as the Dot-Com Bubble raged. He’d sit behind the class, on the window sill overlooking the hill that led to Charles Street - a direct road from the suburbs into the heart of Baltimore. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” I’d start. [And holy cow… is that poem long](. But that was the assignment. Fifteen students - all coursing with testosterone… all reciting the same poem. All the way to… “Good fences make good neighbors.” One would hope that its meaning reached one of us. [Upgrade to paid]( “There You Go, Son” Doc Fitz graduated from my high school in 1968 and returned to teach in 1979. I’m not sure he took off the “dress shirt and khakis” uniform for another five decades. He was one of many editorial mentors - but his distinction was “The First.” Doctor Vincent “Doc” Fitzpatrick Craig Vetter, Dick Schwarzlose, and David Protess would follow over the next four years at Northwestern. Doc had a better nose for editorial than all of them. Doc had a series of catchphrases. If you told him something good, he’d smile, point at you, and whoop in a slight Virginia accent, “There you go, son… there you go!” But the one that stands out the most is a badge of honor. You received an important bonus if you had gained extra credit in his course. Those recitations of poetry and other literature were graded. He’d sit on that ledge, offering assistance and docking points with each flubbed line. But if you had that credit, you could take an extra day to study the lines. He referred to these delays as a “one-day blow.” If you were randomly selected to recite that day, you could stand at the front of the room, say, “One day blow,” and he’d motion you back to your seat to live another day. These memories all flood back because of the news. [Upgrade to paid]( The Boys of Summer On Monday, Carl Erskine passed away. He was a former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher who tossed two no-hitters and won 20 games in 1953. He once held the record for striking 14 batters out in a World Series game. He was also a great friend of Jackie Robinson. Erksine was the last surviving member of the great Boys of Summer - the celebrated Dodger teams that spanned his career from 1948 to 1959. He was 97 years old. I grew up learning about baseball in the 1950s. My father still has most of his baseball cards from when he was a kid. He also has movie posters (the originals) for films like The Jackie Robinson Story and Fear Strikes Out. I know too much about the 1950s New York Yankees, information that I’m sure will win me money in a bar bet at worst… or Jeopardy! at best. But I didn’t know much about the Dodgers—the Brooklyn iteration that moved to Los Angeles in 1958. That is until my senior year of high school. In Doc Fitz’s class, we were assigned to read and study a portion of Roger Kahn's 1972 classic baseball tome, The Boys of Summer. Kahn grew up in Brooklyn and covered the Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune. The book was a nostalgic look at the author’s youth and a journalistic recounting of the team's golden years, particularly their long struggle and ultimate triumph in winning the 1955 World Series. What made that series notable? A lot. There were 11 Hall of Famers in that 7-game slog between managers and players, but this was the first World Series in which a series MVP was named (Dodgers pitcher Johnny Podres). Dodgers great Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch in that series. Jackie Robinson stole home in Game 1, but he was oddly absent from the team’s lineup in Game 7 after being benched for Don Hoak (This is an excellent Trivia Question for baseball fans). I could go on… but this is not about baseball… Robinson Steals Home, Game 1, 1955 In my high school AP Composition class, Doc Fitz handed us a copy of a single page of Kohn’s book—his purpose—to showcase Kahn’s writing ability and his capacity for using metaphors. In this example, Kohn highlighted the destruction of Ebbets Field, home of the Boys of Summer. I remember every word of it… I am writing this from memory. It goes: The team grew old. The Dodgers deserted Brooklyn. Wreckers swarmed into Ebbets Field and leveled the stands. “Wreckers swarmed,” Doc said. Like bees or wasps. Then Doc noted that they didn’t “knock down the stands.” The wreckers “leveled” them… drawing images of a wrecking ball. There is so much imagery in one sentence. The piece continued: “Soil that had felt the spikes of Robinson and Reese was washed from the faces of mewling children. The New York Herald Tribune writhed, changed its face, and collapsed. I covered a team that no longer exists in a demolished ballpark for a newspaper that is dead.” It was the first time I’d heard the word “Mewling.” This remains one of my favorite pieces of American writing. It is a sign of changing times and expectations and a reminder not to take anything for granted. I read the entire book later that summer. It transformed my appreciation for writing. When I attended the Medill School of Journalism the following year, thanks partly to Doc Fitz’s recommendation, I was constantly reminded of Kahn’s last sentence in this example. At the time, newspapers were dying due to the rise of digital publications. Yet, so many professors at the school (who’d come from that world to teach) clung to the idea that the internet was not a competitive threat to “real” newspaper journalism. How wrong they were… As a result, this sentiment always stuck with me, making me a child of the 2008 financial crisis, one who diversifies everything in my career. On Mencken Doc Fitz was enthusiastic about the written word. A well-crafted sentence was as exciting to him as a play at home plate at a Baltimore Orioles game. This is why he became “the protector” of famed author HL Menchen's great works. Doc served as the Curator of the H. L. Mencken Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore until his death. Perhaps that’s why I’ve read everything Mencken has written. The author glistens on an expanded Mount Rushmore of journalists and editorial influencers, including Hunter Thompson, James Joyce, Chris Hitchens, Joan Didion, George Orwell, Gay Talese, and Matt Taibbi. For those who don’t know Mencken, he became famous for constantly blistering William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes Monkey Trial. He referred to Bryan as “one of the most tragic asses in American history.” What’s not to like off the bat? Mencken was the Simone Biles of editorial - a linguistic gymnast whose commentary transcends America’s existence. When you read him… you discover that whatever he said in the early 20th century is “more relevant today than it was back then…” And if you say that… you realize his works are just as relevant in both eras… Because NOTHING EVER CHANGES in America. Try these 12 classic Mencken lines for size to see if you agree with me… The “italic” emphases are mine. - Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. - It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph. D. will thereby cease to be a moron. - A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. - When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money. - Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. - Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. - There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public. - Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. (Editor’s Note: You can substitute this for “Environmentalism” if you’d like.) - Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - Sometimes, the idiots outvote the sensible people. - The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. And my favorite… the opening page of my book The Man with the Big Red Balloon… - The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. This final line makes me question anything my moral betters have told me. [Upgrade to paid]( Reflections and Our Days in the Son I still have my copy of [A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing]( on my “showcase” bookcase behind my camera at my desk. It’s one of the wittiest writing collections in American history - and should be on any writer's bookshelf. And I have Doc Fitz to thank for this. Doc passed away last summer - news that didn’t travel fast enough for me to return for the memorial. But I hope—wherever he is—that this little jot down memory lane will suffice and that many of his editorial heroes became mine. With the markets under stress, take yourself a “One Day Blow” occasionally and catch up on reading. Remember the people who got you here, and take a little time to understand how you got here. There’s a lot of great history and writing in America… worth reading and discussing. Don’t let any blowhards tell you otherwise. Stay positive, Garrett {NAME} PS: Yesterday, I wrote about two wealthy men who died on the Titanic, allowing others to survive in their place. I said I didn’t think our elites would ever do the same. Well… [I couldn’t make it 12 hours without finding a perfect example to prove my point.]( Disclaimer Nothing in this email should be considered personalized financial advice. While we may answer your general customer questions, we are not licensed under securities laws to guide your investment situation. Do not consider any communication between you and Florida Republic employees as financial advice. Under company rules, editors and writers cannot recommend their positions. The communication in this letter is for information and educational purposes unless otherwise strictly worded as a recommendation. Model portfolios are tracked to showcase a variety of academic, fundamental, and technical tools, and insight is provided to help readers gain knowledge and experience. Readers should not trade if they cannot handle a loss and should not trade more than they can afford to lose. There are large amounts of risk in the equity markets. Consider consulting with a professional before making decisions with your money.   [Like]( [Comment]( [Restack](   © 2024 Garrett {NAME} 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 [Unsubscribe]() [Get the app]( writing]()