Scared in the Dark Today in the rain, I got hooked into a movie I had seen and resisted for some time. It’s called Genius and is the storyof Max Perkins, the famous editor at Scribner’s who discovered and published F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, among others. Jude Law plays Wolfe and he is a desperately troubled figure that has an overactive mind and an out-of-control literary ego that may have helped…
Rain, Rain Go Away I started writing about the rain on January 1 and here it is the middle of January’s and I’m still doing it. This has been an unusually wet month here on the hilltop. Last night sounded like the wrath of God with the wind howling and rain pelting the house and windows. It all started yesterday once I landed and it hasn’t let up yet. According to the online weather report,…
The Otto in Us All Today, as I wandered around NYC, I went to go see A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. Hanks has been the American cinematic Everyman for many years and as he ages along with the rest of us Baby Boomers (Hanks is two years younger than me) he is increasingly playing older roles, which seems both appropriate and very sensible. I don’t know how beloved he is to Millennials, but…
Friday the 13th 2023 has two months on the Gregorian calendar that have a Friday that falls on the 13th day of the month. Those occur in January and October this year and western superstition deem them to be unlucky days. The history of this unlucky heritage seems to stem from Norse mythology and focuses around a dinner party among twelve of the Norse gods that was crashed by Loki, the shape-shifter god that has…
The Cocoon I spoke to Kim today as the Atmospheric Rivers buffeting Central and Southern California raged on. She was hunkering down during the storm. We have been very fortunate in San Diego relative to other areas of California for many reasons. To begin with, the impact of the long term draught has not been as severe in our area than it has been in the more northern parts of the state. We have not…
The Hot Seat Today I am sitting in the breakfast room wearing a blue suit and tie, like I did for the better part of forty-five years during my working life on Wall Street. As much as I am unused to strapping on my business armor at this point in life, I ws never that bothered by dressing the part during my working life. I had gone to four years of prep school during my…
The Hot Seat Today I am sitting in the breakfast room wearing a blue suit and tie, like I did for the better part of forty-five years during my working life on Wall Street. As much as I am unused to strapping on my business armor at this point in life, I ws never that bothered by dressing the part during my working life. I had gone to four years of prep school during my…
A World Gone Mad I am once again sitting in the sedate and peaceful setting of the NYC Cornell Club breakfast room. I find hat hen one travels, one’s view of the world takes on a different perspective. We awake in a different time zone with people we know still asleep and others we used to know less far away. The places around us are either or both more or less familiar and we tend…
Invictus In 1875, William Ernest Henley penned a short poem about the English tradition of maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. The last two lines of the poem are the most memorable and are: I am the master of my fateI am the captain of my soul. I was reminded of the poem while watching the Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman movie by the same name, Invictus. It is the story…
Seeing the World There are only a few pieces of promotional mail that I bother with. One of those that I can’t seem to ignore is that National Geographic Expeditions magazine. The magazine is a pretty fancy piece of literature that must be expensive to produce and is therefore probably not just sent out randomly. I must be of the preferred customer list as both a long-time subscriber to their magazine and an occasional buyer…