60 Degrees on Boxing Day

Yesterday was bright, sunny.   Nature smelled fresh from overnight rain.

Today morning snow flurries.  Grey and somber.

Time for more Christmas songs and winter poems.

Velvet Shoes

by Elinor Wylie (1921)

 

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

 

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Singing From on High

The traditional Christmas story feels somewhat out of touch in our current stage of economic progress. Very much apart from present everyday experiences.

Except for a few countries, there are no shepherds tending their sheep by night.  No one to see angels announcing news of great joy.  Nor an angelic host praising God with song.

Or might there be a modern day version of this event?

Not of shepherds tending flocks, but shoppers reviewing  lists.   A very busy, packed department store of last minute consumers seeking just the right gifts.

Not voices from afar but the growing impression of a musical sound.  And then suddenly an angelic choir, seemingly everywhere and nowhere, surrounding the crowd with exultation.

Yes, it did happen.  Really.  And with modern iPhones, the whole event was captured for all to witness.   Some were stunned with awe.  Others sang along with the joyful noise.  Some hugged their neighbors.

No one continued shopping.   It was too powerful an experience to continue with everyday tasks.  It interrupted immediate intentions and changed the sense of where everyone was at that time.

All  shared this rejoicing in the midst of a very busy time.

You can feel the  emotion in the event.   And experience it,  as the glory of Christmas captures everyone, at least for a moment.  The smiles, the sense of  exultation.   The wonderment !

Merry Christmas on this and every day.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp_RHnQ-jgU”

A Season Uniting Two Cooperative Virtues

Christmas in all its joyous celebrations seems to walk an awkward line between secular, commercial activities at their frenzied peak and the religious meaning of the Advent season.

There is a minor echo of this tension in credit union history.  As the decade of the 1950’s evolved there was increasing friction between two priorities.  One group wanted to promote the business potential of the cooperative system versus the expansion minded pioneers whose primary intent was forming more credit unions.

Today these differing views might be categorized by those who focus on purpose as the driving force,  versus those who belief that growth through acquisitions of their peers and bank purchases are the way to secure the future.

How One Company Combines the Season’s Messages

Occasionally a firm will try to unite the business and religious aspects of this special season.   The UK grocery chain, Sainsbury, has created a unique “commercial” each Christmas for over a decade.   Each new effort commemorates an important value of the season while reference to the company’s business is at best tangential.

In 2014 their “offering” lasted over three minutes.  As described by Stephen Masty:

“it recreated the informal Christmas Truce that spread among soldiers in the trenches near Ypres in 1914, one hundred years earlier. Instigated by a British officer writing to his German counterpart across No Man’s Land, it spread up and down the battle lines as, for a few hours, the guns stopped firing. Yesterday‘s and tomorrow’s combatants sang hymns together and celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace.

The 2014 ad was the first to mark the Christianity of Christmas. German and British soldiers start to sing “Silent Night” almost spontaneously; while the only visible product is a WW1-era chocolate bar. I find it emotionally powerful.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWF2JBb1bvM

The story of the ad’s creation is in an accompanying video of just over three minutes.  It demonstrates why and how a very large for-profit firm honors lasting human values while supporting their business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s1YvnfcFVs

The videos’ message is that in the worst of times there can be humanity.  And this impulse is to be honored in better times.

Peace, for a moment, broke out in the midst of war.   Individuals overcame the ever-present demands of military imperatives and the survival instincts created by trench warfare.

The Blessings of this Season

I am pleased to have shared my observations about credit unions with you this past year.  

Cooperatives are a special way to combine our resources to help with everyday individual needs.  This is a practical necessity that has existed since humankind first gathered in groups.  Whatever the state of the economy.

This season reminds that sharing is an essential human value that is uniquely enabled by cooperative design.  Whatever the difference in operational priorities, our unity arises from the belief that the needs of others will be met with common, not just individual, effort.

 Merry Christmas.   Peace.  Goodwill.  

Words of Hope in this Season

Words often feel special this time of year.   The following poems were written during tragic personal circumstances of both authors.   Each still affirms hope.

The first was converted to a popular Christmas carol, sung often today. The other, translated from Russian, celebrates life’s fullness even as it is near ending.

An American Poet Writes in the Face of Personal Tragedy

The circumstances of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s writing I heard the bells on Christmas Day, are clothed in tragedy and personal depression.   His wife, Fanny, had been killed two years earlier in a fire started as she was sealing envelopes with hot wax when a flame caught her clothes.

He was too badly burned to attend her funeral, and wore a beard for the rest of his life to disguise the scars on his face from trying to put out the flames.

As a 29 year old widower, he had courted Fanny for seven years before they were married.  In their 18 years together, they had six children. For Longfellow, they were the happiest time of his life.

Two years later, in 1863, his oldest son Charlie enlisted in the Union army against Longfellow’s wishes. The poet was a strong abolitionist, but also a pacifist.  Charlie  wrote his father from DC where he had joined the 1st Massachusetts Artillery:

I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer, I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good God Bless you all.  

He caught fever in June and took leave that summer to heal at home.  He rejoined the fight.  In November At New Hope, Va., he was shot, the bullet went through him from back to shoulder, just nicking his spine.

Longfellow brought his son back from DC to their home in Cambridge to convalesce, arriving on December 8th.  Listening to church bells ringing at that time of year he was moved to write his poem (original words below) combing his anguish of war and hope for peace.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

The carol version often omits the middle stances about the war in which “hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men”.

But despondency is overcome with the affirmation that “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep” and that ultimately there will be “…peace on earth, good will to men”.

The Burl Ives recording of the carol from 1966 is the shortened version omitting the Civil War context.

A Poem of Hope from Russia

Osip Mandelstam was a Russian poet and essayist who lived there during and after the revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. Born in 1891 he was educated in St. Petersburg, France and Germany.   In 1937 Mandelstam was arrested and sentenced to five years in a corrective-labour camp in the Soviet Far East. He died that year at a transit camp near Vladivostok.

He is considered one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. This poem was written in the camp shortly before he died.

And I Was Alive

Written by Osip Mandelstam

Translated by Christian Wiman

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.

It is now. It is not.

(May 4, 1937)

A Season for Work Appraisals

Bosses Struggle to Respond to Burned Out Workers (Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2021)

“Workplace stress is rampant and resignations have risen; employers are trying four-day workweeks, mandatory vacation days and other new ways of working.

In the first 10 months of this year, America’s workers handed in nearly 39 million resignations, the highest number since tracking began in 2000.

Some want better jobs. Others, a better work-life balance. Still others want a complete break from the corporate grind. Almost two years into the pandemic that left millions doing their jobs from home, many Americans are rethinking their relationship with work.”

A Season of Remembering and Joyous Sounds

One the joys of our annual cycle of religious and secular observances is how past memories are often rekindled.  They arise in personal stories and from music primarily played at this time of year.

Last Friday my wife and had dinner with a 90-year-old couple, still living in their home.   The husband is still active in the credit union community.   He was 11 years old when WW II broke out.

As we finished the meal with Greek cookies bathed in powdered sugar, they recalled a time as children when war cake was served for dessert. The ingredients include little or no milk, sugar, butter, or eggs, because they were rationed, expensive or hard to obtain. When his father received a 5-pound bag of sugar as a gift for Christmas one year, he immediately turned it over to his church lest he be accused of violating ration limits.

Remembering times past makes them special, no matter what our worries were then.

Musical Joys with New Words

Music is especially potent in calling up special moments. I remember the first time I heard a live performance of the Handel’s Messiah.  During the Christmas season I was at Boston Symphony Hall, senior year in college, on a date with a young lady whom I would later marry.

Years later I heard the familiar sounds, but with different words.   The oratorio was being sung in Russian, a banned work during the Soviet era.  This was one of the first recordings in that language.   Listening to words, unknown to me,  made it a wholly new experience.

En route to a holiday dinner years later while listening to the local classical music station, I heard a new CD that was also not in English.  But it was so buoyant, melodic, and festive that I looked up the station’s playlist to find the title of the CD, Karolju.

It is a suite of original Christmas carols for choir and orchestra by the America composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned and first performed on November 7, 1991 by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The composer modeled the work and its rhythmic variations after Carl Off’s Carmina Burana.   Here is how the composer explained his unusual choice of language.

As I wished to compose the music first, the problem of texts presented itself. Finding appropriate existing texts to fit already composed music would have been virtually impossible, and as I did not trust my own ability to devise a poetically satisfying text, I decided to compose my own texts in a variety of languages (Latin, Swedish, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, German, and Italian) which, although making reference to words and phrases appropriate to the Christmas season, would not be intelligibly translatable as complete entities. It was rather my intent to match the sound of the language to the musical style of the carol to which it was applied. I resultantly selected words often more for the quality of their sound and the extent to which such sound typified the language of their origin than for their cognitive “meaning” per se.

Though the music of Karolju is original, the first and tenth movements of the work paraphrase the coda of “O Fortuna” from Carmina Burana. The third movement also quotes a four-measure phrase from The Nutcracker by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, which itself dates back to an 18th-century minuet.

This is the link to all of the individual carols on the album.   Many languages are used but to capture the spirit of the season you might open with the Swedish carol #2, for 1:45 minutes.

Enjoy these original sounds of the season’s spirit. Listen as the words, even when not understood, create texture for each musical movement.

Please add your favorite choral sounds at the end of the blog.

 

 

Reflections on December’s NCUA Board meeting

No exact count is available, but close to 1,000 pages of staff material including BAM’s, budgets, proposed rules and other supporting material were provided NCUA  board members for December’s meeting.  The material was for decisions having, I thought, great moment for credit unions’ future.

Discerning what matters in such an output in the 5-10 working days when staff’s final versions are delivered is an impossible task.  Decisions are made and priorities set, not by rational debate or objective facts, but fatigue overload.

The so-called “bipartisan” vote is cast because there is no way to develop alternatives. Process overwhelms the participants unless you’re the one in charge of the process.

Here are two reactions about the meeting’s outcomes:

From a longtime colleague:

The slow but steady March to oblivion continues.

There were 18,000 credit unions when I started. Are we under 5,000? And over 1/3 of them are under 50 million.  It used to be 80% of the assets in 20% of the credit unions. Is it 90/10 by now?

You’re 77, I’m 70. The question is “will credit unions outlive us, or will we outlive credit unions?” I’m going to eat well and go to the gym to increase my chances.

By Elon Musk:

Rules and regulations are immortal. They don’t die. And if more rules and regulations are applied every year and it just keeps growing and growing, it just takes longer and longer and it’s harder to do things. (from WSJ interview).

If I heard correctly during the meeting, one part of the new RBC rule dealing with goodwill has a 2029 expiration date. In this case immortality is only ten years.

If Only in My Dreams

My first reaction to the meeting was deep disappointment for both credit union leaders, their members and NCUA directors.  Decisions were disconnected from reality and relevant data.  Political agendas set half a decade ago were now being imposed by fiat, not need.

During this time of year in 1943 during WW II, one of the most popular songs was Bing Crosby’s  I’ll be Home for Christmas. It begins:

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents by the tree 

The final stanza:

Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

The melody is memorable; however, the meaning is quite somber. The reality longed for will be just a dream.  Until the bigger events involved are over and life can once again be lived on terms we are free to choose.

In our life’s most earnest commitments, usually work or family, we continue to long for the best. That “feeling of being at home” gives us satisfaction and meaning. We use our creativity to achieve this sense of purpose, where we truly feel comfort.

I slowly realized my and others’ disappointment with the Board’s actions were from my thinking NCUA was “home” for credit unions.

A Mortuary Is Not a Home

The “home” credit unions pursue is their side-by-side journey with the members. It is not a set of rules promulgated by a government agency.  NCUA is no home for credit unions.  Its primary role today is as the mortuary for credit unions.

Looking to NCUA to understand the aspirations of credit unions, their members’ longings and the power of cooperative design is “only in your dreams.”

Hope is intrinsic for life to have meaning.  That is what credit unions at their very best try to deliver in every member relationship.

My error was believing that NCUA leaders might also share that same goal. The meeting was a slap of cold water in my face, an important reality reminder.

For that I am grateful.  It is credit unions that bring members the “wonderful life” this time of year, and all year round.  As the angel Clarence says to George Bailey: “Each man’s life touches so many other lives, and when he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

NCUA’s primary capacity is creating  holes.

Credit union’s strength is because members believe this is their own financial home which they can trust.

That financial reality is not based on new rules, budgets or even a guardian angel fund.   Instead, it is created from loyalty and relationships built over decades, or what, at this time of year, we call Goodwill.

A Nativity Play-Poem

Amid sheepish shepherds,
embarrassed kings, awkward angels
with their bent-coat-hanger wings –
my most unforgettable character
is the tender-hearted lad
assigned to play the innkeeper,
who undid the whole production
when he assured the wandering couple,
“You folks are so, so lucky.
We just had a cancellation.”

by J. Barrie Sheperd

Today’s NCUA Board Decisions: Encouraging Credit Unions to Help Members Succeed or Adding More for the Regulator

There are two weeks left in the year.  But we already know that in the second year of pandemic pivots and uncertainties that credit unions have again and again responded to urgent  member needs.

Daily reports of year-end bonus payments and record levels of loan re-financings are adding  millions of dollars to member’s wallets.

While yearend NCUSIF numbers are not yet complete, it appears this will be a second year in a row of net recoveries and no insured losses.

But America is not out of the woods.  Covid continues to play havoc with well laid plans.  Interest rates will go up.   Both costs and prices are in a rising phase-no one knows for how long.

2022 looks to be another year of “transitions.”   To the office or not.  More virtual or hybrid meetings.  Continued efforts to find the right employees.  How can we save costs.

The Environment for Today’s Meetings

The notices below in the DC’s Union train station and a vending machine in a hotel capture what the ordinary person is dealing with in this uncertain economy.

These are glimpses of the  external context for  NCUA’s decisions that will set agency’s spending pattern and priorities for next year.

Will the board’s decisions inspire credit unions to do even more for their members especially those who are vulnerable still?

Will the last two years of virtually no NCUSIF losses encourage the board to adopt the historically proven 1.3% cap and reaffirm the NCUSIF’s long proven cooperative design?

Will the enormous burden and cost in member value of a CCULR/RBC implementation be paused or even tabled, while more data can be gathered about the benefits it is supposed to bring?

The NCUA board is facing hard decisions.  Will they recognize the unique challenges for credit unions to do more for members?  Or more for NCUA?

 

 

“No Wonder We All Are Bored with NCUA Board Meetings”

This week I asked my good friend Randy Karnes for his perspective  on the upcoming NCUA board meeting (12/16/21). Here’s what he had to say:

Chip hoped that I might inspire the NCUA board to consider its agenda differently; to move away from the agenda’s details and towards activities that would craft a new expectation for us all.   

NCUA and its governance needs to focus on bigger issues. Issues that inspired owners. Issues that made business fun for those who derive  meaning from their efforts. Issues that extended value so that the everyday owners, and professionals reporting to them, would care about board meetings and NCUA’s  oversight functions.

He hoped the three politically selected directors would consider that we need more from the regulator.  We want a group that cares about our professions, our ideas for governance,  and our safety nets.  That the credit union-funded institutions at NCUA are still there to back our plays, our efforts, and our belief in the work ahead.

So I read Chip’s 12/13 blog as the inspiration for my comments, but only found the inspiration to declare I understand why no one gives a sh*t anymore.

Here’s what we’re looking at for Thursday; an agenda that claims we should be paying attention:  Got to wonder?

Multiple issues with the RBC/CCULR capital regulation, a topic of great concern that will affect the CU industry for years to come – a bureaucratic press headline and a staff that cries wolf.

    1. Lots of numbers (NCUA/FDIC) – far from any consequence for those locally looking for numbers that will sustain them.
    2. CU’s have already maintained enough dollars for last few “so called crises” – but who would waste a crisis yet to come?
    3. Is it credit unions  or the NCUA Board  who is focused on “change for change” to their own ends – we see no need for any capital change.
    4. Why trust their “ends” at all, no wonder we all are bored with NCUA board meetings, they are not for us and we hear no mention of us in their words or declarations.
    5. More reg burden for the sake of burden. Another option for NCUA to leverage their situational control of our members’ futures. These new tools are ineffective and simply clutter other work that screams for action.
    6. Confusing stats for the sake of stats, oil and water displays, confusion just to take our eyes off the ball – member value.
    7. Member faith in NCUA thinking is muddled by over wrought academic complexity.  No workman’s simplicity in this group, that would take experience; a care for the work.

Now shift to the budget item.

The next budget is just another edition off  an assembly line of budgets – cranking out ugly babies with no mirrors in sight. More spending wanted, when less would send a message of hope and clarity.

    1. Planners who expect a rising  curve of more money in this to the next year, to every year – void of awareness from past exploits or value adds.
    2. More people to pad our importance, to enhance processes now un-manned, and with no plans for when needed. We need more people without recognizing there are none to be had.
    3. The budget is not about the flow of our industry and the requirements for its sustainability.  It is simply to ensure the NCUA outlasts its ward, that the NCUA is the last group standing.
    4. The industry’s funds are always there to direct, and NCUA will always be  quicker, slicker, and quietly positioned to direct those funds from members’ activities to a bureaucratic engine fueled by money.
    5. Just give us more, we are hungry.

These are the “minutes” for the 12/16 NCUA Board meeting,  ahead of time, a template of expectations from a bored audience of the industry’s CU members – customer-owners who wonder why the value of ownership has lost its punch.

But the funny thing is we all really do still give a sh*t! We are hungry to believe, follow, and to give homage to the NCUA’s efforts if they would simply find the heart to sell us that they still have the will to deliver value to our members. The heart to simply believe in the work of cooperatives. The heart to inspire us with the simplicity of a local community’s effort to lift itself up by work well done.

I know that Chip wants me to declare that 12/16 is a day for us to rally our voices and take on these tactics from the agenda – to shout we give a damn about RBC/CCULR or the board’s broken budget processes, but I can’t.

The only goal I have for the NCUA’s board and bureaucrats is to work harder, and work smarter to bring back those days when we waited in earnest to read the press reports of an NCUA board meeting. To read the reports ready to smile with the effort and the intent that made us believe we had a valuable ally for our futures.

It’s not that America has given up on its institutions that ensure our success; rather we simply forgot how to promote  leaders for these institutions whose roles are to guard and foster our efforts. We need to change how NCUA board members rise to the occasions ahead.

Too many times these directors have started out as lame ducks….and it has nothing to do with their terms. Lame work is becoming the standard.

Tell Me Why I’m Wrong.