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It wasn't the Bilderberg Group's annual shindig -- that's really all I am allowed to tell you.
But my initiation into my first "secret society" had all the trappings one has come to expect: There were shady figures wearing war bonnets, buffalo heads, and coyote pelts on their heads... a roaring council fire on top of a hill that sent sparks and embers soaring ninety, a hundred feet high into the clear September night... a trail of fire pots leading through other pitch black mountainous woods for two, three miles.
My induction into one of the Boy Scout "honor societies," which I was elected into, even required a vow of silence for a day, two nights of sleeping under the stars and, last but not least, a day's worth of menial labor to kick off a "life of cheerful service" that I had apparently signed up for.
Organized in a "clan" of eight or nine other scouting dads and scoutmasters, our "ordeal" was to tidy up the quartermaster's shed at a local scout reservation.
Imagine a small airplane hangar stuffed to the gills with junked, recycled, partially used and aged, but otherwise brand-new, plumbing, electrical and ventilation supplies. Then imagine a good twenty years of accumulation and selective use of the same crammed, piled up, scattered and misplaced on shelves and in boxes, bags and cartons in various states of decay… it's all the jobs you've carefully tried to avoid doing at home… super-sized.
Working in almost complete silence, we had the place straightened out in a few hours. The embarrassed quartermaster sent us to set up a large tent (apparently surplus from the Korean War), mow huge tracts of lawn with antiquated push mowers, waterproof the health lodge's porch... until he finally ran out of tasks for us to do.
We had cleared his years-old to-do list in less than eight hours... and he ultimately admitted defeat.
Marching back to our campsite, we encountered hoards of teenage boys, smudged, sweaty, and dragging tools in exhausted silence.
What a perfect racket, I thought to myself, worthy of adopting for the office. You declare your company a secret society, make your coworkers pay a fee for the privilege to attend, re-label work an “ordeal” -- and keep them from complaining by imposing a vow of silence.
When I suggested it this morning at the office, I encountered limited enthusiasm for my plan.
So much for that "life of cheerful service" thing....
***Another day, another upward move for the Dow Jones Industrial Index. This morning, the index climbed back above 14,000.
That means the "subprime" dip of July has once again been erased from the books. And all of you who took my advice back then and considered the drop down to 12,500 a buying opportunity were able to buy the top U.S. stocks at a 10% discount or better.
I'll be sticking to my guns and predict a Dow above 15,000 by year-end.
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