In the Louvre after you made seen the Mona Lisa people will see a painting by Theodore Gericault titled The Raft of the Medusa. The painting is based on a real life venture and was and is the subject of many people examining the subject. One person who wrote a book about the subject is Jonathan Miles who wrote The Wreck of the Medusa published by Atlantic Monthly Press, NY, 2007. The story is the French were colonizing the country of Senegal and were sending a number of ships to do so. The lead ship the Medusa followed the coastline of Africa too close and wrecked on a reef. The ship was carrying 400 people and naturally there were not enough lifeboats, for it was not expected not to make the journey to Saint Louis. The time of the year, they wreck was storm season but also in 1816’s nobody had mapped the coastline of Africa, although people had reasonable ideas. The ship wreck in one of the worst places possible – the land was the edge of the Sahara Desert and all that it implies (think of the sand storms from the movies); the sun; lack of water; lack of vegetation and lack of proper clothing for the desert. There were many strikes against the spot the ship wrecked.

Some people managed to get on life boats and managed to land. They had to walk through the desert for 200 miles and were lucky to be alive at the time. The story of the raft is 150 people boarded and 10 people were rescued from the middle of the ocean 8 days later. The raft as the painting was not well put together to manage the ocean storms; nor to manage calm seas for there was little water (the old sailor expression water, water all you can see but not a drop to drink as the water is salt water) and little food. While people can live without food for a long while, it is the water which we can not live without. What do you do? how long would you suffer? what actions would you take to survive? These are age old questions and the stories are people went to the extreme of both living and not surviving.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, there are many age old questions that ask what would you do and hopefully you will never have to ask them. Most of us do not know for most of lack skills or “MacGyver ability to make something workable of simple things”; when many people were from the farming community if you did not have handyman skills it did not get done. On one hand that is a good thing on the other hand it often would be easier in our lives if we hand better handyman skills. However, if that is our biggest concern then you have done well. Fortunately when you are dealing with money, it is possible although rough to start out again – there are always opportunities which come forth if you have the patience and the ability to do research to take advantage of them when they happen.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.