President Ford's Funeral:

I thought that I might be able to increase my blogging between semesters, but that is not to be. I now have secured some very labor-intensive (albeit very interesting and fascinating) gigs, including an out-of-town excursion, which will keep me very occupied. So much for more frequent blog posts (and going back to piano playing, et cetera) for the next few months.

As everyone who follows the stock market or who works for the Federal government or who deals with the Federal government or who goes to the Post Office knows, Tuesday 2 January 2007 was a day of mourning for President Gerald Ford.

I shall not now go into the merits of his career or presidency, other than to acknowledge that many of us, myself included, did not fully appreciate him in his day. Other bloggers and pundits have exhaustively analyzed such issues.

This posting will address the fact that the national shutdown occurred on the Tuesday following a national shutdown on a Monday following a weekend. And so, there was no postal service for 3 days straight, and no stock trading for 4 days straight. [The fact that Saturdays are my own religious Sabbath is only incidental to this discussion, though in many respects it only amplifies the situation for me.]

Fortunately, the banks remained open, so I was able to attend to certain necessary transactions.

There are two ways of looking at this.

A. Question the wisdom of shutting down the government for 4 days; and

B. Viewing the 4-day shutdown of the Federal government as a successful experiment, which we can use as a model for future budgetary economies.

Take your pick!


And Rest in Peace, Gerald Ford.