Missive #660

Awesome first-fiction venture that immediately thrusts the author into P.D. James’ dark orbit—with a peel-the-layers-off tale of utter emotional devastation, relieved only by the deep sensitivity and kindnesses of the detective hero, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley.

Lynley, handsome, wealthy, and brilliant, is “so damnably charming” that pugfaced, ill-tempered probational partner Det. Sgt. Barbara Havers “couldn’t understand why every criminal in the city simply didn’t surrender to accommodate him.” Now, Lynley must resolve a beheading already confessed to by the victim’s obesely bloated daughter Roberta, who was found next to William Teys’ body dressed in her Sunday best.I read a couple books from the Lynley series many years ago when I was trading dead tree books in RV Park libraries. I remembered how good they were so have started reading the series from the beginning. This is the first book with the Havers charter just beginning to evolve into the one I really liked. She insisted she did it, said she wasn’t sorry, and then slipped into catatonia. The true explanation is a horrific saga of abandonment, sexual manipulation, wistful rationalizations, and woeful coping—involving a child-bride, a daughter-sister forced into playing mummy (in every adult sense), child rape, infanticide, debauchery absolved in the confessional, a child victimized by her mother’s grief, a woman’s malicious enthrallment of two lovers (psychologically incapacitating both men), and all too many people sustaining their own lives by throwing others into chronic jeopardy. At the close, most readers, echoing Lynley, will wish that they too had had the opportunity to decapitate—at the very least—William Teys. Brilliantly drawn here are: the awful American tourists who gleefully impart the legend of the Keldate baby; Havers’ claustrophobic family life; Roberta and sister Gillian connecting in anguish with the credible help of a hospital professional.

There’s perhaps a shade too much symmetry (the Havers/Teys shrines, for example, and the all-too-intentionally unseeing prelates), but let’s not quibble: this is a marvelous book and a searing debut. — Kirkus Review

The proceeds from the stock I sold just over a month ago were reinvested in three other stocks, about a third in each. My original thought was to put it in one year T-bills at the auction but the problem with WellsTrade is you must call them using a telephone to place the order for that. So I have gone with OBIL which is an EFT that ‘rolls’ one year T-bills every month and gives me a dividend each month. Stable price and low income but better than a bank interest bearing deposit account. The second third went into MOO which is another EFT but this one invests in Ag sector stocks e.g. Deer, Archer-Daniels, Tyson Food and other mostly large cap companies that service farms and ranches. The last third went into VITL which is a smaller cap company that ‘ bring pasture-raised eggs, butter and ghee from family farms’ to the market.

I have a small gain in the MOO and a smaller loss in the VITL so far. Yesterday, I sold a ladder of covered calls on 40% of the VITL shares that I hold. What this means is I received a premium from the sale of the call options that expire on March 20 and April 16. If the stock price remains below the call strike prices I will be keeping all the premium received as income. If the stock price should go over the strike prices I will be obligated to sell at the strike price. For both expiration dates if that were to happen I would keep the premium and also have a short term capital gain from the sale. The alternative is I can buy the calls back and keep the stock thus be in a position do do more covered calls. This will obviously reduce any premium that I received from the original call sale but IF done intelligently I should retain most of it.

This is a learning process and I have asked ChatGPT for help. Along with the other research that I have done the answers that I’m getting from ChatGPT have gone a long way in explaining how this works and what I need to pay attention to in establishing the original sell position and possible buy back to keep the stock from being called away. If everything works as planned this will not make me rich but I’ll be getting an education and earning more than if I had the money invested in more OBIL shares. I’ll find out. HA

We didn’t get much rain yesterday but there was enough to get us wet if we had walked. It looks like today we have partly cloudy but no rain forecast. We will be doing our walks and trusting to luck.