Tree Surgery I have always been a tree guy as long as I can remember. I have mentioned my favorite tree painting before. I bought it about twenty-five years ago at a Private Banking gathering I attended in Punta del Este. The way to create buzz and cause gatherings to happen in the high net worth banking business is to do the things that people of means like doing and then invite them to attend.…
Unpacking COVID This will be my third story in a row about COVID, which tells you clearly that I am very self-focused since I’m infected by the beast (still positive this morning though symptoms are about gone). But then again, this is the most significant health issue we have all faced in our lives and it has quieted our every move for 2+ years, so I think a third story about it is justified. The…
Home Sick Let’s start by being clear, I am not Homesick, I and home and I am sick. I cannot remember the last time I was sick (perhaps three years ago when I got a bad cold coming back from a conference in Rotterdam…that seems a century ago since I have nothing to do with that business any more), but I really cannot remember the last time I had to stay home because I was…
The End of Days For two years and three months I, like the rest of the rational world, have lived in some degree of dread about contracting the Coronavirus and it’s affliction, which has gone by the name of COVID-19. In the earliest days (early March, 2020), when I was on my way to London on an expert witness assignment, my trip got truncated halfway when I was in New York because my London counterpart…
The Five A’s of Ride Leadership Today was day three of our AFMC Moab ride. The most important element of a good ride is always the weather and it has been superb, so that has been a blessing. We are all appreciating this good fortune. It is hard not to when you are sitting out in this magnificent landscape in near perfect weather that is warm and sunny and yet not too hot and with…
The Scale of Life Today is our last day in Moab with our AFMC buddies and we will likely take one last ride through the red rock bluffs and plateaus that surround this other-worldly place that we enjoy so much. As is often the case, the landscape around us barely changes from year to year, but the people of the group most certainly do. I think we are all supposed to change somewhat with time,…
Gettin’ Loopy We gathered last night with our American Flyers Motorcycle Club members at the Sunset Grill here in Moab. The Sunset Grill is the old home of the Uranium King or Utah, Charlie Steen, who discovered the Mi Vida uranium ore load just south of Moab in 1952. At the time the United States was anxious to get domestic production of uranium ore and it was the Mi Vida strike that both put Moab…
On Sacred Ground When I owned a home in Park City (I actually owned five different homes in Park City over fifteen years), one of my favorite pieces of artwork was a print I bought by a well-known western artist names Bev Doolittle. One of her favorite techniques is to paint images with a double entendre. I had several of her prints, but the print I especially loved was called On Sacred Ground and it…
Everyday Risks Today is the first morning of our Utah motorcycle ride. We picked up Chris and Ann at the airport on Saturday night and began our journey into the event by finding that one of their three bags got lost. San Diego airport, technically named Lindbergh Field in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who flew the Atlantic Ocean on a solo flight 95 years ago this month, was the venue. That was considered an amazing…
Dying Broke When I wrote my book Global Pension Crisis in 2013, I laid bare a rather stark reality that the world was ill-prepared to fund the Baby Boom generation other than at the extreme cost to the younger generations. I called it a “species-defining” moment for mankind since it would establish our priorities between feeding our aged (all of whom are inevitably living longer than planned) and impairing the growth and prosperity of our…