Ferrari worth a Fortune in Fables

When they announced the winning bid for the Ferrari — $38.1 million — the crowd at the Bonham's auction in Monterey, California, cheered the record price.

Sold was a rare, curvaceous, powerful, red 1962 240 GTO Berlinetta.

Bottom line, it is no more than a collection of metal parts. This one had been crashed and rebuilt. Here in Oregon its title wouldn’t be considered “clear.”

My first reaction to the fall of the auctioneer’s gavel was to ask: what might $38.1 million buy besides this?

Scholarships for the talented and gifted poor.

Retirement of student debt.

Care for the sick (think ebola in West Africa).

Wells and water for thirsty, drought-stricken villages.

Homes for the homeless.

The list is endless.

But somewhere, someone with $38.1 million in loose change decided in his wisdom that highest and best use in this troubled world was ownership of this car.

Not surprisingly, the possessor of this “pride of ownership” was not revealed. Somebody knows what hubris is.

No, I did not cheer the sale. I wondered why others would.

We are told that shock turns to anger, then grief, then acceptance.

Now, five days after the sale, I have arrived at “creative therapy.”

The sale of the Ferrari stretches the imagination.

For one thing, $38.1 million is no longer locked up in some bank account. The Ferrari had freed it. The money could go to work.

But doing what?

Who got the check? And what would that person (or persons) do with the money? After all, the the car had been owned by one family for 49 years, from 1965 to 2014. Why did they sell it? Boredom? They got tired of red? They were in the red?

I began to imagine scenarios. Some uplifting, some ironic, some funny, some even more outrageous than the sale itself.

Here are a few:

What does one do with a car like this? Where can one go and not be A, envied, B despised or C shunned? At Walmart they gawk. At the Ritz, they see uncouth ostentation.

What does one say to: “Hey Dad, can I take the Ferrari tonight?”

What does one say to the dying, emaciated ebola patient who is told the news in his crowded death tent in Liberia?

What happens when the owner is “outed”?

Call a press conference? Hire a PR firm? Subject oneself to questions about the homeless, the starving, the thirsty? About those forced to travel on foot, in the heat, without shoes or superchargers?

Auditioned response: “I’ll have to get back to you on that one….”

Too dangerous to park in public. Hire motorcycle escorts and body guards. How about trucking the beast for safety’s sake? After all, Mercedes make really nice trucks. You can even sleep in them. Try that in the GTO.

The shrewd seller, with $38.1 mil in his pocket might use the money to buy, oh 38 new Ferraris at a million a crack and watch them appreciate.

Maybe the buyer is trying to impress a certain someone. Good luck with that. Stay clear of certain someones impressed by a $38.1 million Ferrari. Then again perhaps Ferrari-infatuated couples deserve each other. But wait, who gets to drive the Berlinetta? A stablemate is needed. The Rolls will no longer do.

Suddenly you need another Ferrari.

There’s this guy I know who just bought 38 of them….There’s an auction house crowd eager to cheer as you bid up the price.

Aesop wrote fables. Why not Ferrari?

Witness to the Occupation

I’ve pondered deeply, as you no doubt have, what the Occupy movement is all about.

I’ve conclude that, at its root, it is a witnessing — witnessing for justice and a just society.

“To bear witness” is a spiritual term, and this movement is certainly that. It is driven by a spirit of outrage, of non-violence, of consensus, of fairness, of peace, of equality, of community and of justice....the list goes on and on.

To bear witness is also a legal term. Unrefutable, unbiased, untainted witnessing is the basis of justice in our courts. The Occupy movement here in Portland is encamped next to the County and Federal Courthouses. But the bearing of judicial witness is not for those courts alone.

The witnesses here have brought themselves before the court of public opinion, whose verdict, one hopes, will be cast at the polls.

So far, surveys tell us, the public sides with this committed eclectic community of witnesses. Their testimonies are beyond credible. They need only point to the homeless and bereft who have joined them. They too — the veterans, the mentally ill, the bankrupt, the homeless — are witnesses to the injustices of our society.

They also point to the greed of the one percent.

What society dare arrest and detain its honest, non-violent witnesses? That’s the question posed to those who hold public office. Here in Portland, so far, our public servants recognize the righteousness and truth of this cause.

They recognize the need of the public, to whom they answer, to fully hear the testimony and fairly weight it.

In places like Oakland, public officials will pay the price of stifling the sworn and overt truth of this movement.

To those who have not become involved but who have seen this movement and heard its message, realize that you too are now witnesses. How long will it be before you volunteer to take take the stand, to swear to tell the truth — to testify.

Remaining silent in these troubled times is not an option.

The Homeless and the "Homely"

Details about this nation’s big, dirty secret of inequality seeps out in odd ways in the media.

Today, the ugly disparity oozed around the edges of a New York Times story about how developers of stratospherically high-priced New York City apartments and condos hire and fire sales reps at whim.

Poor dears.

The Times reporter barely acknowledges the real story within the story: the sales prices the ultra rich fork over to put lavish roofs over their less-than-humble heads.

According to the story, some folks with unseemly gobs of money pay as much as $35 million for these places. Some units have 6,000 square feet of space. What goes on in such expanses? How are they furnished? How many housekeepers does it take to maintain them? What are the taxes on them? What’s the write-off that the rest of us pick up? How often are they left vacant as owners jet from country estate to mountain chalet to pleasure yacht?

Turns out that to sell some of these urban indulgences in the recessionary market, prices have been “slashed.” That can mean that they go for “only” $10 million or so.

“Cheap” to the super rich is a price in the high seven digits. In the real world most of us live in, that kind of money could house dozens, perhaps hundreds.

Inequality, thy name is the scouring homeless on the streets and the super-rich “homely” dwelling in clouds of excess.