Move over, Dolly Parton

What do I have in common with the Titanic, Gertrude Ederle’s swim across the English Channel, and Betty Grable’s legs?

Insurance by Lloyd’s of London, that’s what.

Lloyd’s is not actually an insurance company. It was started in 1686 by a dude named Edward Lloyd who owned a coffee shop on Tower Street in London. Lots of sailors and ship owners hung out there, and he and some other guys decided they would offer financial backing for maritime enterprises, for a fee, of course. Today Lloyd’s basically comprises syndicates that share the risks for underwriting all manner of things. Much of it is routine, like the policy I just bought to cover the property I inherited from my recently-deceased aunt in Washington state.

But Lloyd’s has gained a reputation for being willing to underwrite all sorts of unusual things, like Dolly Parton’s breasts, David Beckham’s legs, and Tom Jones’ chest hair. They also wrote the first automobile policy in 1904, which at the time seemed pretty strange.

For the record, the legs of Pin-up Girl Betty Grable were insured for $1 million. When Gertrude Ederle came ashore after her swim in 1926, Lloyd’s forked over £1,863. And the Titanic cost them $10 million, which was a bundle in 1912.

I was pretty excited to learn that my aunt had also left me her shares in 21st Century Fox, the Murdoch mass media company. I started thinking about how I would spend my share of the profits. They brought in $28.5 billion last year.

Then among her papers I found the stubs from the dividend checks. Last year her 21st Century Fox stock earned her $5.76.

Oh, well. Maybe I'm just not ready for show biz.

Like paying the doctor with a chicken?

Since the domicile of my recently-deceased aunt is in Washington State and I am in Michigan, I have hired an attorney out there to take care of the basic legal matters relating to her will and probate and such like.  I was lucky to find a very nice man, Michael by name, who is retired now but still takes cases, especially for the elderly, partly to keep busy but mostly just to help people out. He does some pro bono work, but even for paying customers like me, his hourly rate is low.

We talked on the phone a couple days ago. I had several questions for him, and before we concluded the call, he wanted to make sure I understood that he does not bill clients for the time spent talking on the telephone. He stressed that I should feel free to call him any time I needed legal advice about my aunt’s estate.

Most lawyers bill a client for every minute they spend even thinking about their case. This guy is unique, and I told him so.

He said people are usually surprised, and he told me about one man for whom he handled a legal matter. The man stopped by Michael’s house with some papers, and they spent the better part of an hour talking about the case, among other things. When he was preparing to leave, he asked, “What do I owe you for today?”  He was surprised when Michael said he owed nothing. “I don’t charge for conversations we have at my kitchen table drinking coffee,” he told him.

This man, who had what Michael called a “hobby farm,” knew the lawyer was an avid gardener, so by way of thanks, he stopped by Michael’s house the next day with three bushel baskets of cow manure for his garden.

“I can’t think of anything more appropriate,” Michael said, “than a lawyer being paid with bull shit.”

In vino veritas

My wife doesn’t often drink anything but Diet Coke, but we ate out last night and she enjoyed a glass of wine with her dinner. She said she wished she would remember to order it more often.

Wine was not part of my family's life. My first experience with wine came when I was about 14 years old and some people who came to our house for dinner brought a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape. I was allowed a sip, and I decided that if that’s what wine tasted like, I didn’t want any part of it.

Because of that I abstained from drinking wine for a lot of years, until I discovered there were plenty of wines out there that taste way better than Manischewitz. That was in the mid-1970’s when you could pick up some cheap but acceptable vino from wineries like Gallo or Carlo Rossi for about $1.50 a bottle.

To earn extra money when I was in graduate school, I gave guitar lessons at the local music store on Saturday mornings. The store owner didn't take anything out of the $3 I got for a lesson.  It was just a way for him to lure customers into the store.

Sometimes lessons were paid for a month in advance, sometimes a kid would forget to bring money, and sometimes there were no-shows, so my income varied a lot from week to week. One particular Saturday I had given several lessons, but I finished the day with only $3 in cash.

On the way home, I stopped at a liquor store and bought two bottles of wine with my earnings. While driving home, I suddenly thought, “Well, ain’t that just like your basic drunk -- gets a day’s pay and immediately spends it all on cheap hooch.”

Half A Thousand Origami Cranes

The crane, like the dragon, is a kind of mystical creature in Japanese lore, and there is special significance to folding one thousand of them from paper. Depending on which legend you believe, 1000 paper cranes will get you either a wish granted by the gods or a lifetime of happiness and/or good luck. Some think they all need to be strung together in a garland.

A bride or a newborn baby might be given 1000 paper cranes as a wish for their future, and people will also hang them in their homes as a kind of talisman. It is also sometimes said that these 1000 cranes have to be folded all in one year to be effective.

I’ve been folding paper for a number of years, but I found the crane difficult. About a year ago, I decided that any origamist worth his or her salt ought to be able to fold a decent crane, so I started practicing, and they started to turn out pretty well. I used various types and sizes and colors and prints of paper and scattered them all around the house in places where my wife would find them (stuck in the frame of  the bathroom mirror, in the seat of her recliner, on top of the toaster). She thought they were so pretty and wonderful she actually said to me, “You can leave those all over the house if you want to.”

She has never said whether she regrets saying that.  In any case, I began folding more cranes with an aim to making it to 1000. Unfortunately, I didn’t get them done in a year, but I am halfway there. I folded my 500th crane yesterday. Since I thought it should be special, I made it a gold one.

There are still cranes all around the house in baskets and on shelves, but most of them are in my office in big glass jars. Empty jars await the next 500, and if I can get them done before another year goes by, maybe the gods will grant me half a wish.

I'll get around to gun control later

Last night I read some poems by Judith Viorst, one of my favorite writers. There's one called “If I were in charge of the world,” my favorite line from which is:

“If I were in charge of the world
“A chocolate sundae with whipped cream and nuts would be a vegetable.”

Naturally, that led me to thinking about the state of the world if I was running it, and I concluded that:

If I were in charge of the world, children under 12 would not be permitted in any public place; vodka martinis could be drunk by the gallon without causing intoxication; all blackjack tables in all casinos would deal single-deck pitch for $2 minimum bets; and no person would be admitted to a Walmart store wearing pajama pants.

That’s all I’ve come up with so far, but I’ve only had 24 hours.