Charity and Gratitude in North St Louis
St Louis, MO
April 25, 2018
The beeping sound you heard last week was us backing up the truck in reaction to the “Family and Friends” sale from Duckhorn.
Our thanks to Brian and Ashley for letting us in on this stock, and to Rita for exercising the options.
The investment represents a diversified portfolio, including several long-term holdings that will yield dividends for years to come…with others providing ready access to near-term liquidity.
As valuable as the wine is, however, no asset is worth more than time…
…
…OK…maybe the wine is more valuable, but still…
Time is pretty important, and investing time with the right people is better than spending time with the wrong people.
This is the week, as much as any I work each year, when I typically invest my time with the right people.
Among the pleasures of my job is our team’s annual “summit”, during which members from around the world converge on an unsuspecting location to assess the prior year, anticipate the next, distribute time and talent among forsaken corners of the local community, and dispense lies and mischief from forbearing corners of local bars.
We come away with batteries recharged, networks re-established, (unconsumed) spirits reinvigorated, and purpose restored.
For our fourth annual rendition we descended on St Louis…the Four Seasons Hotel serving as base camp, as it often does for our corporate events.
This is an interesting place.
A high-end (it is, after all, a Four Seasons) crib of contemporary style, it abuts the Mississippi River and adjoins the Lumière Casino, receives the shadow of the Arch from the south, casts its own toward the Stan Musial bridge to the north, and serves as a beacon on the edge of downtown St Louis.
To the west, across the interstate that (like many such abominations constructed in the 1960s) cleaves the city from its waterfront, are the bars and restaurants within the appealing “First Chicago School” architectural edifices of Washington Street, while to the south lies the delightfully refurbished Gateway Arch Park, which bridges and buries the offending highway in an admirable effort to suture its wound and hide its scar.
The wounds and scars to the north are deeper and require more time to heal.
The “Old North” resembles many once-thriving in-town neighborhoods around the U.S. that have, since about the time the aforementioned interstate eviscerated the St Louis waterfront, devolved into previously undetected circles of Dante’s inferno.
From the early 19th to the mid-20th century, intact families, self-reliant entrepreneurs, and a diligent proletariat sustained a dense, bustling community.
Then, Federal “assistance” arrived…and the descent commenced.
Of course, anyone can make a mistake. But to create a real catastrophe, you need the government.
People are neither always good nor always bad, but are always subject to influence. The federal meddlers and world-improvers certainly influenced the poor inhabitants of north St Louis.
The “War on Drugs” stimulated gang violence, and a plethora of convoluted “War on Poverty” programs provided recruits by enticing the dissolution of the most reliable predictor of prosperity and bulwark to poverty: marriage.
Husbands became uneconomical (and, soon, unheard of), mothers turned compliantly to AFDC/TANF, their children turned instinctively to crime, and crime inevitably crippled (licit) commerce.
Even had it not, the minimum wage knocked the lowest rung from the ladder to any jobs that persevered, or that might otherwise have existed.
Work and family dissolved; dependency, dereliction, and drugs coalesced.
One “benefit” most children from this area will never see is Social Security. Not because the program won’t survive, but because they won’t.
The life expectancy of the typical child born in this neighborhood approximates that of one raised in North Korea, and lags that of a Nigerian.
To visit and teach such children was our task this afternoon.
Our specified objective today was, thru Junior Achievement, to impart a semblance of Financial literacy to grade-schoolers at Confluence Academy in the Old North neighborhood.
A tall task but, to the extent we succeeded, these kids now (actually, they probably did before) have more economic sense than the celebrated PhDs in Academia, the Press, and at the Fed who for the last century have, with the delicate touch of Harvey Weinstein at a casting call, left their fingerprints all over “the economy”.
I was impressed and charmed by the first-graders with whom I worked. In the course of three hours, a bridge spanned the chasm dividing age from youth, experience from experimentation.
Our prescribed series of lessons did not delve into the intricacies of short selling, collateralized debt obligations, or covered calls, but did enlighten our students to the distinction between wants and needs, the obligation to sometimes sacrifice the one for the other, and how entrepreneurship and win-win exchanges can over time facilitate both.
For three hours, a Chilean co-worker and I coordinated and conveyed five lesson plans and assorted activities to an assemblage of two dozen eager hyper-actives.
After ten minutes explaining to the children that my co-workers home country is not a spicy bowl of beans and meat, we launched our lessons.
I confess I began this day as a 14th century priest might anticipate ministering to an assemblage of plague victims. It was the right thing to do, despite the risk of bodily harm an excursion to the area entailed.
Like our medieval friar, I emerged from the experience more blessed than those I tried to help.
The smiles, hugs, and assertions of love that these seven-year olds supplied melted my skepticism and my heart, carrying me from their school buttressed by the satisfaction only charity and gratitude can bestow.
This afternoon, these respective blessings flowed in abundance…and in the opposite direction I had anticipated.
JD
