MountainMornings

As I watched LiNa, the oldest competitor (29) to play in the Women’s Finals,  win the French Open, I was ecstatic. She had that star quality, like Federer or Baryshnikov, to make their sport/art look easy. At one point, as LiNa was tossing the ball into the air to serve, a Chinese fan yelled something from the stands. She let the ball drop. The announcer, with a French accent, said that the Chinese fans have not yet learned “…the rules of deportment in tennis.” Silence, s’il vous plait.

Unfortunately, leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, bankers and traders abandoned their own set of rules of conduct. The SEC and the Feds remained silent as we slid deeper into a recession. Reagan had opened the playground to deregulation, and there was no adult supervision; players became greedy, and lost sight of the bigger picture. Can you tell, Bob and I watched the HBO movie this week, adapted from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book, Too Big to Fail? It is a must read, or see.

Bob's dessert cell pix

But back to the anniversary dinner from the last post. I didn’t take my camera, at Bob’s request. A wedding rehearsal, golfers, and a family of geese were traversing the green outside Fossett’s window. While savoring the Chef’s tasting menu, a woman was arriving late to the table of six next to us. Every single man at the table stood up as she approached, which led Bob to say, “You don’t see that too often anymore.” Well maybe not, but in the South you do. Our head waitress greeted us by name… deportment can most definitely be a cultural thing. An older woman I respect once told the younger Bride to watch how a man treats the wait staff at a restaurant, that and the way he behaves with his mother are the single best, earliest predictors of his character.

LiNa, when asked about her age said, “Age just paper.” Maybe the global financial crisis is just paper, or  maybe the media needs to keep putting names and faces to the problem, to shine some light on Obama’s team, still trying to right this ship of unemployment and debt  statistics that is listing our great country toward a banana republic. Because following Palin’s mystical bus tour around just doesn’t cut it. And we all know that silence and indifference are the two key ingredients to any economic or societal meltdown.

One of my favorite NYTime’s columnists, and like Sorkin, a reporter with a mind and a conscience, Nick Kristoff says it best about “Our Fantasy Nation” today.