A simple thing.........................................

Dave Mason............Shouldn't Have Took More Than You Gave

 

For the love of the sea............................

Simon Winchester, a man who has penned some wonderful books, relates his, and mankind's, long love affair with the seas- here.  A wee excerpt:

He sat up, sighed, then closed his book with an awful finality. He removed his spectacles and leaned toward me. “I regret to have to tell you that Her Majesty takes a somewhat dim view”—he paused here, evidently hoping to lighten the mood before plunging in the dirk—“of young officers trying to drive her extremely expensive warships around the world when they cannot tell red from green, and thus the left from the right. Port from starboard. Your color-blindness, I am sorry to say, ensures you will never join the Royal Navy.”

If you have never read any of Winchester's books - do.  I would recommend  The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary,  Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, or The Professor and The Madman

Opening paragraphs.......................

The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp.  The waves rose to goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white sprays caught in the night sky cascaded downward over the deck under the force of the night wind.  Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point.  The animal was dying.
-Robert Ludlum,   The Bourne Identity

Fifty years ago...................................

Walt Disney................................The Son of Flubber

 

Baking a bigger pie.......................................

Wealth Creation:  An economic miracle made possible by the free enterprise system.

The Free Enterprise System: The combination of  entrepreneurialism, the sanctity of contracts, enforceable private property rights, the rule of law, and responsible government (somebody has to take care of  the road and bridges, the water and sewer systems, the police and fire protection, the schools, etc.).

An example:

"In 1931, Wall Street tycoon, physicist, and patron of scientific research, Alfred Lee Loomis along with his brother-in-law and partner, Landon K. Thorne, purchased 17,000 acres (69 km²) on the island (over 63% of the total land mass) for about $120,000 to be used as a private game reserve.^{[27][28]"  -Wikipedia}

In 1950 the population of Hilton Head Island was about 300 people.  Access to the island was limited to private boats or a ferry.  Timbering and fishing was the mainstay of the local economy.  In 1956 the first bridge from the mainland to the island was built, at a cost of $1,500,000. (I bet the local politics behind that decision were interesting).  In 1957 the development of Sea Pines, the first resort development on the island commenced.

Flash forward............less than sixty years later:

In 2010 there are 33,306 housing units on the island.  Based on the chart from whence that statistic came, it would appear that about half of the residences are occupied full time by their owner.  The other half are mostly rentals and season second homes.  (I suspect that the total number of "Seasonal, recreational, or occasional use" housing units includes the +/- 6,559 total rooms in the 58 hotel/motels on the island, but don't know for sure.)

On Hilton Head (some 42 square miles of land) there is a broad mix of residential uses.  There are house trailers on postage stamp lots and there are two million dollar beach front homes.  There are plentiful condominium projects and there are typical single family home sub-divisions.  Not knowing this market, and not having seen any true statistics, your faithful blogger is going to make the wild guess (plus it makes the math easier) that the average housing unit (including the hotel rooms) has a value of $150,000.

On Hilton Head Island there is also a broad mix of commercial developments, including countless restaurants, marinas, golf courses, retail stores of all sizes, office buildings, schools, government buildings, etc.

So, in sixty years we have magically gone from an almost unoccupied island, used mostly for timbering, to a place with (give or take a bit) about FIVE BILLION DOLLARS worth of residential real estate and perhaps a lot more than another ONE BILLION DOLLARS worth of commercial real estate.

More than two million people come visit Hilton Head annually.  Said visitors reportedly spend about 1.5 billion dollars while on the island.  Based on my experience, that spending number is more than a little light.

Wealth creation (and lots of family fun along the way) via the free enterprise system.   There is nothing like it in this world.  Thank thee kindly.

33 Guidelines to investing in real estate...............

Guideline #11:  Good management makes good investments.

Real estate is not a passive investment.  Successful investments require steady and competent management.  A few trademarks of good management:  proper screening of tenants, keeping occupancy levels high, making sure the rental rates remain market appropriate over time, taking care of day-to-day maintenance, anticipating - and budgeting for - capital improvements, anticipating and solving problems, communicating sooner rather than later, and not letting issues fester.

It is not difficult.  It does require discipline and effort.  It is important.

"A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves"

Mason Williams...........................................Greensleeves

 


Greensleeves, which dates to the 16th Century, is wikified here

Opening paragraphs.......................

     They came for her in late August, on the island of Corsica.  The precise time would never be determined - some point between sunset and noon the following day was the best any of her housemates could do.  Sunset was when they saw her for the last time, streaking down the drive of the villa on a red motor scooter, a gauzy cotton skirt fluttering about her suntanned thighs.  Noon was when they realized her bed was empty except for a trashy half-read paperback novel that smelled of coconut oil and faintly of rum.  Another twenty-four hours would elapse before they got around to calling the gendarmes.  It had been that kind of summer, and Madeline was that kind of girl.
-Daniel Silva,  The English Girl

When I first started reading "self-help" books.......

.......(a long, long time ago)  I was startled by the claim that only 5% of our population was (or would become) financially independent.  In the land of opportunity, how could this be true?  Those early gurus stressed that it was the habits we adopted as individuals that would make it so.  So it was with some interest that I followed a link to this list of 20 Things The Rich Do Everyday.  It is a list that Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, or Earl Nightingale could have written.  Take a peek.

thanks Glenn

Fifty years ago......................................

The Beatles......................................Devil In Her Heart

A rock star preaches capitalism.............

I had the short video clip of Bono speaking about Africa and capitalism embedded here.  Every time I opened the blog it would randomly start playing.  Very annoying.  Not knowing how to make it stop doing that, I removed it.  Go here to watch the video.
"Commerce is real. That’s what you’re about here and it’s real. Aid is just a stop-gap. Commerce, entrepreneurial capitalism, takes more people out of poverty than aid, of course we know that."
-Bono

thanks Brian

33 Guidelines for investing in real estate................

Guideline #10:  These are business relationships, not friendships.

Landlords and tenants have a relationship based on a business contract, not friendship.   Likewise, Lenders and Borrowers have a relationship based on a business contract, not friendship.

Forget this at your peril:  read, understand, and respect the fine print.

Personally, I use a yellow hi-liter.................

“Her library would have been valuable to a bibliophile except she treated her books execrably. I would rarely open a volume that she had not desecrated by underlining her favorite sections with a ball-point pen. Once I had told her that I would rather see a museum bombed than a book underlined, but she dismissed my argument as mere sentimentality. She marked her books so that stunning images and ideas would not be lost to her.” 
-Pat Conroy,  The Prince of Tides

As ex-presidents go........................

........................he has really been a good one.

back story here and here....................................

For Ray and Doug

Five Finger Death Punch.............................Bad Company

 

The boys are doing just fine...............

One of the glories of the Intertunnel is that you can become friends with people you've never met and who live a gazillion miles away.  Three years ago, just before our family ventured off to a  Hilton Head vacation, I contacted Doug Fine, the wizard behind the curtain of the Electicity blogs, and Ray Visotski, the not-so-simple Village Undertaker, and suggested we meet up somewhere in South Carolina.  Ray did the research and found this Lobster House place in Allendale, about half way between Aiken and Hilton Head.  Last night we convened our third annual  get together there.  As always fried pickles, cheeseburgers, and beers were on the menu.  We spent a brief few hours catching up on family, friends, business, blogging, music (including picking some obscure -to me -tunes on the jukebox), and politics. Interestingly, all three of us have our youngest child entering college this fall.  A most enjoyable evening.  Thanks guys.

The Lobster House Restaurant in Allendale, S.C. has gone many a year without seeing either a lobster or a paint job.

The entranceway to the Lobster House.  My kind of "private club."

Steve (wearing his prized new Masters 2012 ball cap - thanks Doug), Ray, and Doug inside the Lobster House.  Karen took fine care of us.

Unknowable............................................

Mason Jennings................I Love You And Buddha Too

 

Contented....................................

“Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with a divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next 10 years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.” 
-Pat Conroy

image via

Learning something new today.............................

Us midwesterners have limited experience with tides, although I've known forever that the gravitational pull of the moon as it orbits the earth causes the high and low tides.  The high tide at Hilton Head this morning seemed excessively high.  Commenting about it to the nice beach patrol person, she responded that it was because of the full moon.  Oh.  Then the thought:  Wait a minute, the moon doesn't change.  It is always the same size.  It is only the play of the sun on it that makes if crescent or full.  My Sweetie said, "Well, you can google it when we get back to the condo."  Wise woman.  Turns out that the Sun also affects tides, just to a lesser degree because of its distance.  When the Sun and Moon are aligned in a certain way, such as during the full Moon, their gravitational pulls are in tandem, thus increasing their impact on the tides.  In case you want more about tides:

Because the tides are influenced by both the Moon and the Sun, it's easy to see that when the Sun lines up with the Moon and the Earth, as during a New Moon or Full Moon (a configuration also called "syzygy"), the tidal effect is increased. These are known as spring tides, named not for the season, but for the fact that the water "springs" higher than normal.

On the other hand, if the Sun and the Moon are 90 degrees apart in relation to an observer on Earth as during the First Quarter Moon or Third Quarter Moon (sometimes called half moons), then high tides are not as high as they normally would be. This is because despite its greater distance, the Sun's mass allows it to exert enough gravitational force on the oceans that it can negate some of the effects of the Moon's pull. This phenomenon of lower high tides is called aneap tide.

The height of the tides can also vary during the course of a month because the Moon is not always the same distance from the Earth. As the Moon's orbit brings it in closer proximity to our planet (closest distance within a moon cycle is called perigee), its gravitational forces can increase by almost 50%, and this stronger force leads to high tides. Likewise, when the Moon is farther away from the Earth (furthest distance is called apogee), the tides are not as spectacular.

Fifty years ago.....................................

Ann-Margret/Dick Van Dyke/Janet Leigh.......Bye Bye Birdie