The Danger Zone Yesterday was Memorial Day, the day when we are supposed to honor those Americans who have given their vitality and perhaps their very lives in defense of our country, in defense of democracy. It is a day I take quite seriously and I made that small gesture of flying the American flag out in front of the house, like I try to do every year. You see, I was too young for…
Totems My life is now all about one totem after another. We all know what a totem pole is, but I’m not sure many of us have stopped to wonder about the underlying reasons why native people display them. A totem is a cultural symbol that tells people who we are and what we respect. They are most often a natural object or an animal that is believed by someone to have spiritual significance. I…
Adieu ADU There are two subjects that I keep returning to consider like a bee drawn to a flower. The first is getting an RV and using it to travel around the country. I think that one may finally have been put to rest two years ago when we rented a Sprinter van and went up to Ojai for what was supposed to be three days and turned out to be only two. That is…
Texas Chainsaw Massacre In 1974, almost fifty years ago, Leatherface burst onto the scene of the national pop consciousness as a cannibalistic mass murderer. Our culture loves a horror movie for reasons I can’t relate to (I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy any form of horror movie) and this particular horror franchise has spawned nine sequels, a video game and even comic books that have made somebody a lot of money off the…
An Aging Buffalo I know I should call it a bison and I know that a buffalo is something mostly found in Africa and India and not on the Great Plains of America, but everyone calls it a buffalo, so I often fall back into calling my Bison Boulder a buffalo. The beast is now seventeen months old and has been seen by 90% of the people who I expect will see it, but I…
So Hard…and then, So Easy I have lately been reminded over and over again about how hard life can sometimes be. That is actually a silly thing to say or think in a world overwhelmed with so many devastating events every day. For the better part of four months now we have lived day-by-day with the Ukrainian situation, one day exposing more atrocities by the Russians in their quest for Putin’s world dominance play, than…
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…