Buying Quality I’ve just written about how overpriced the world has become and how difficult it has become to capture value in today’s world of runaway generational wealth expectations. What I mean by that is that people seem to feel like they are being stupid if all they do is get by and earn a fair wage. Everyone wants to own their own business and sell it at some wonderfully high multiple and spend their…
A Sunday Selection In retirement, one day of the week wanders into the next with barely a care. My pal Mike and I have made a point of keeping track of each other’s minimalist schedules, almost as though our prior working lives, so governed by scheduling, require some outlet. Mike plays formal senior softball games on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and usually a pick-up game on Monday morning. He does home shores like vacuuming and…
Yikes!!! I came into adulthood when the housing boom really began in the mid-1970’s. I haven’t bothered to gather the actual data to back up my timing assertions, but I feel confident in saying that the era post-WWII until that time was an era of vastly expanded residential building and generally increasing access to the suburban American dream of owning a home. That and defined benefit pensions were the rewards American society chose to heap…
The Big Picture When you travel on vacation with a group, as we have done many times in the past with our motorcycle group, you end up spending time here and there with people who you might not otherwise go deep with. This happens at unusual times and places and under circumstances that perhaps even influence the nature of the conversation. Six years ago we did a flurry of travel in the fall of 2017.…
Risen Awareness Yesterday I was playing in the dirt. I was gardening, which is to say that after sleeping in (waking up at an unusually late 8am) and walking with Kim and Betty just to get the lotion from the motion benefit, I had a few errands to run (excess recycled cardboard is an extraordinary burden in retirement for some odd reason) and then decided I needed to tend to my garden. You see, later…
Clean-up on Aisle Six For years I have wanted to teach ethics in my business school course roster. For one reason or another, mostly, I imagine, because ethics is like Sociology… what could be so hard about it? Two years ago, I was given the chance and embraced it wholeheartedly. Setting up a course is always a lot of work. This is especially so when there is no defined curriculum. In my thirteen years of…
Return to the Mist For some reason I am back on the get-up-early program. The good news is that I’m sleeping a bit longer at a stretch, but the bad news is that I’m waking up on East Coast time for some reason. One of the best parts about that is that I get a jump on the day and I get to sit at my desk and enjoy the view to the north. That’s…
And It’s Suddenly Summer Today is Easter Sunday and it has been a cloudless day with constant sunshine and a high of about 71 degrees. During my three years on this hilltop, that sort of profile of a day’s weather would have sounded cool rather than warm. But after the last three months, today felt like a warm summer day, and that seemed appropriate for Easter Sunday. After everyone had their brunch and left for…
Life in the High Court As part of my experience as an expert witness, I once got an assignment in the London High Court, which is the court of England and Wales where civil cases are tried. While the American legal system is based on English Common Law, it is fair to say that the two systems are still very different. According to the textbooks, English Common Law is controlled by a combination of statutes,…
Yucca on the Brain When I bought this house eleven years ago, I could see it had a beautiful garden, but that was from a quick drive-by from the bottom of the driveway. I never actually set foot on the property until the closing a few months later. At that time I had heard about succulents, but I really didn’t know an agave from an aloe from a yucca. When I moved out here to…