Common Learning I am sitting in an atrium on the University of San Diego campus in the building in which my course on Law, Policy and Ethics is assigned to meet. The building is called the Learning Commons and I am happy to report that at 6:40pm on a Wednesday night, there seems to be a lot of activity. This is distinctly different from last semester, when my course met in the Joan Kroc Institute…
Always Something Who says retirement is easy? There should be little or no stress, right? That should certainly be the case with a casual fun project like my Hobbit House. My MO is optimism. As that pertains to projects around the property, that translates into a sense that everything is easy and quite doable, so what’s the problem? While I have been aware of this can-do attitude tendency, I do find myself slipping easily into…
Out of Reach In the process of building my Hobbit House, I had decided to farm out the stucco work, originally to Handy Brad, who has done some stucco work around the place, and more recently to one of a couple guys who answered Handy Brad’s ad on the Next Door app. That seemed to both Handy Brad and me as the sensible thing to do since Stucco may not be that hard to do,…
A Dry Wind During high school, I lived in Rome, Italy. When most people think of Italy they think of great food, the treasures of Florence and the Medici, the days of Marcus Aurelius and his views of Virtūs et Honos (Strength and Honor), the betrayals of Julius Caesar as made famous by William Shakespeare, the petrified and frozen-in-time inhabitants of Pompeii and perhaps the Nastro Azurro ads of some George Clooney look-alike getting off…
Case Study I have four guest lecturers for my ethics class this semester that I am teaching and I find the story around them interesting. My quandaries have to do with how I chose them, how they responded and how they are handling the task at hand. To begin with one of my friends, Michael the Mad Welshman, who lectured in my Advanced Corporate Finance course last semester, took note of the fact (mostly just…
The Tempest and the Tinsmith I guess I haven’t yet really figured out the seasons here on this hillside. Back east there was a higher degree of familiarity about what February, March or April meant when it came to the events of nature. It would be hard to say that there is more variability out here, but I guess I would say that the stability of the weather out here makes what little variability we…
Wag the Dog Twenty-five years ago Barry Levinson directed a little movie. He had directed such greats as The Natural, Tin Men, Rain Man, Diner and Sleepers, so he is an accomplished director who knows how to tell a great story through some complex plots. In 1997 he made a movie with Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Woody Harrelson, Anne Heche, Kristen Dunst and William H. Macy. It was about a scheme by a U.S. president…
On the Cusp My world today seems balanced on the cusp. Sometimes that just happens to us all, but I am really feeling it today for one reason or another. To begin with, I start my Spring Semester class on business ethics tonight. It is something I have aspired to teach for some time and now its about to begin. I am going for my second Pickleball lesson today with Kim and have my own…
A Loud Knock on the Door Things are closing in, at last, on our friend Donald Trump, and it’s about time. Trump has gotten away with “murder” for over thirty years. His impunity knows no bounds. But sooner or later even The Great Houdini tried one trick too many and found his burst appendix did him in on Halloween. I, like many, have been amazed at how much one arrogant and egocentric man could get…
You Princes of Maine One of the things I enjoy about when Gary and Oswaldo come to visit us, as they have the past few days, is that there is a ritual we go through every evening to find a good movie that everyone will enjoy. For some reason, what is a challenging situation (meaning the selection of an agreeable movie to watch) for just Kim and me, seems never to be difficult for the…