In Times of Crisis, I Need a Movie

Speaking of Netflix, here's their performance (blue line) against the Dow 30's performance (gold line) for the last three months. By way of disclosure, I don't own any Netflix stock, though I did recommend it years ago to a retired postal worker who has made himself comfortably prosperous by doing his own research. In fairness, I haven't checked in with him over the last year, and I should probably compare this chart for Netflix to a couple of major motion picture studios. I suspect the distributors of entertainment are doing slightly better than its producers, these days, since they benefit by variety and the studio can only afford to produce so much of it.

This may seem overly poetic, but people need story-telling to beat back the fear. Think about it: we all grew up in Southern California. Real Estate prices never go down, right? That was a known. That was, like, a bedrock truth.



"No?
You're kidding! Okay, listen. Let's just take a break here. Let's take in a movie. Let's talk about this tomorrow morning. I need a little 'beginning, middle, and end' epiphany here to be able to handle this."

Our sales here on the farm for the last 90 days, are up by double digit percentages over the same period last year, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that we are unrepentant story-tellers. Jon Harmon cannot resist telling a new joke. (If you gagged him, the joke would work its way out of his shoes somehow.) Logan Creighton is always telling our guests something he read last night. We used to have one guy, who invented his own farm mythology everywhere he went, making up new Riley family legends with every hayride. I miss having David Leslie Thomas around, too, because he was full of story-telling bravado.

My dad, and my Uncle Blaine, and my Uncle Don were all absolutely full of the blarney. Uncle Don could tell you a story while he was juggling flaming torches. My dad could tell you a story, and if you closed your eyes, you would swear you were in an English pub somewhere. On one occasion, Dad was hiking my older brothers and sisters up a dusty trail in the Sierras. The girls were complaining about thirst. Dad told them a story about a clear mountain spring that was just around the corner. He waxed refreshing on the subject of the ice, the clear blue water, the daisies growing wild around the eddying pools of a clear, crashing-cool, mountain stream.

He had no idea if there was a spring in the distance, but he kept elaborating, kept cooling the water, kept lavishing size and color on the picture of the pond, until, in the distance...

...the story became truth.