The Shot Heard Round the World This title is intended to harken us back to our pre-Revolutionary days in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts when the very first militia of American patriots engaged British troops in 1775 and exchanged a volley of musket balls with the red-suited “lobsters” of England and thereby marked the start of the Revolutionary War. There are plenty of conservatives in the country who like to think that their actions on January…
Let the Sun Shine In The day is getting off to a slow start ramping up to its anticipated mid-80s temperatures, but the sun is breaking through as the morning crests its half-way point. It’s a Saturday so the traffic patterns are not following the normal Cornell commutation cycle with cars and trucks heading down Warren Road into Forrest Home in the morning and flowing up and out of Forrest Home in the late afternoon.…
On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin! That is the beginning of the University of Wisconsin fight song. It carries on with “fight on for your fame”. I lived in Wisconsin from 1961 to 1965 and pretty much spent my grade school years at the Spring Harbor Elementary School on the southern shore of Lake Mendota, which, along with Lake Monona, bound the capital city of Madison, where the central University of Wisconsin campus sits. This state took…
Back at the Breakfast Bar Sleep patterns are an interesting beast. They certainly set the tone for the night and they can wreck havoc with your day as well. I wish I could tell you what normal is in general or even to me, but I can’t. There is a new normal at every turn when you get to my age. My consistent gold standard is to get from six to eight hours of actual…
Joining the Moose Lodge We have just completed out first day of our return cross-country trek. According to Roadtrippers, we went 523 miles today in a little more than eight hours. Neither Kim nor I am all that keen on slow-playing parts of the country that we have crossed a lot over our lives. The span between Ithaca and Indiana is a zone we have each crossed innumerable times, so we were inclined to just…
Mobilizing the Retreat This morning we enjoyed a life event. Charlotte and Evelyn planned and orchestrated a wedding of their two new stuffed kittens, Brownie and Coconut. I’m not sure what occasioned the event, but it was a full orchestration set up on the deck replete with bride and groom seating for friends, a stuffed croissant officiating, a red carpet of red towels, wedding music, a wedding cake and a full ceremony with ring-bearers. I…
When a Home Becomes a House Little by little I am removing personal effects from my house in Ithaca. My intention is to leave intact and fully serviceable for people who want to stay here over the next four months to wallow in the memories of Ithaca summers past. This house has Ben a magnet for all the detritus of family life for us over the past twenty-five years. Whenever we are given an odd…
Traveling to the Middle East Over my working years, I travelled extensively in the Middle East. It began in the late 80s, thirty-five years ago, when I went through the region to work on disposing of my bank’s $4B of Latin American sovereign debt. In some ways, it was the petrodollar surge of OPIC and the Middle East that had created the Latin American debt crisis of that age since those petrodollars, which morphed into…
The Day Before the Day Before I have always been an impatient person. If I am supposed to be somewhere at nine o’clock, I am generally there by 8:45 at the latest. I always prefer a morning flight to an afternoon flight because I would rather relax after arriving someplace than try to relax before heading out. While I generally think that promptness and timeliness is a virtue, I will admit that I take it…
Mens Rea We have now watched seven of the presumed eight public hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capital. These hearings have been startling to most of us. I would like to think they were required watching for every voting-age citizen of the United States, but America doesn’t do that sort of thing. We prize our individual liberty too dearly to ever mandate something so specific.…