Dead Babies Can’t Take Care of Themselves Remember Alice Cooper? He/they was born in 1948 in Detroit to a typical post-war middle class American family as Vincent Damon Furnier. It was once his family moved to Arizona that he decided that rock n’roll was his future. He hit his shock rock stride in the late 60’s and early 70’s when he and his pals realized that there was more to rock n’roll than just music.…
Personal Services When I was actively in harness and shoving off for work each day, it seemed to be more than luxury, more a necessity, to use lots of personal services. I peaked in that regard in or around 2000 when I was a senior executive at Deutsche Bank, acting as Chairman and CEO of Deutsche Asset Management USA. I was the senior officer at the 280 Park Avenue location, the historic headquarters of Bankers…
Friday the 13th Today is that magically reoccurring phenomenon of a Friday which falls on the 13th day of the month. This happens once every 212.35 days, so at least once a year. That means we get to think about strange coincidences affecting our lives at lest that often. Today I am finishing up a forced march to grade thirty-three final exams from my Law, Policy & Ethics course that I gave to end the…
The Limits of Friendship Most of my friends know that I write. This is especially the case with my long-time friends from my motorcycle group, The American Flyers Motorcycle Club (AFMC). I started twenty-six years ago writing a trip story and have done one for every ride I have taken since. People love to read about some story they are a party to, so the stories get lots of kudos. I also think that over…
Simply Irresistible I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Robert Palmer, the British singer/songwriter who wrote and sang the top late 80’s hit records Addicted to Love and Simply Irresistible, but both catch-phrases that title and end these two songs stick out clearly in my mind, so I’m sure I’ve heard him sing many times despite not knowing who he was. The man was a true 80’s phenom with his elegant attire and his blend…
Building an Empire I have never cared that much about wealth, or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. I was raised by a mother who genuinely didn’t give the accumulation of wealth a second thought. She was born during WWI, spent her childhood in the 1920’s, came of age during the Great Depression, and spent her early adult years during WWII. Her life, as I really know it, began when she set…
As Old As I Feel It’s Mothers’ Day and it is hard not to remember that I am now at an age when my mother was well into her retirement from the UN and living in Las Vegas. When she was 68, I was 30 and had my own son. That seems like a very long time ago to me and while I’m sure my sister Barb, who lived near her all those years in…
The Age of Greed When I think of great movie soliloquies, I can’t help but think about Michael Douglas standing before a board of director’s annual meeting in his attempt to take over the company to slice and dice it into his pocket and into oblivion, and saying to the the crowd, “Greed is Good!” It is one of the most memorable lines from Oliver Stone’s quintessential and defining 1980’s classic, Wall Street. We all…
Choosing Life It has occurred to me that while I very often write about the hottest political topics of the moment, I have gone the better part of a week since the abortion topic hit our headlines in such a stark manner as it has, and I have not yet chosen to write on that topic. It is a hard topic to address, not because my views are conflicted, but because there is almost no…
Campus Life I never spent any time on a college campus until the summer of 1971 when I left high school in Rome and flew to Cleveland, Ohio to spend the summer working in the Department of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University. My mother was friends with the Department Chair and he gave me a summer job as a research assistant, mostly coding forms on a study that the Department had conducted about he…