Writing to Write The Nobel laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner and long-time Dean of Humanities at Princeton, Toni Morrison died at the ripe old age of 88. She will be eulogized and obituaried by many more eloquent and articulate than me, but it still strikes an important chord in me as a writer and a human being. Toni Morrison was the daughter of two southern-born African-Americans who “escaped” the oppression of the Deep South (Alabama…
Picking Your Friends We all find and make friends in different ways and at different stages in life. When we are babies, our mothers make choices for us. These days it is most common for young mothers to join activities with their child that quickly lead to the forming of playgroups. We all want our children to be socialized and not bound solely to the nuclear family and the cat. So, these groups are,…
Hispanic Invasion Let me start with a disclaimer; I am Hispanic. Whenever I am asked to declare my ethnicity, I always say I am Caucasian. That is not about denying my heritage or ethnicity, but rather to avoid being considered a minority for whatever fact-gathering the form is involved in. With a Hispanic surname, it would be very easy for me to declare myself as a minority, which I do not consider myself to…
Reverse Polish Logic I’ve discussed my love affair with the Hewlett-Packard 12C financial calculator. It is from that device that many of us learned about Reverse Polish Notation (RPN). It’s the logic protocol used by the 12C for operating the calculator. With it, the operator (the numbers) come before the operands (the function like addition or multiplication) when inputting the equation one is looking to solve. RPN was invented in the 1920’s by Jan Lucasiewicz,…
Responsible Hosting I have owned vacation homes since 1986. That is 33 years. Over that time, I have owned vacation homes in the Berkshires (2), The Hamptons, Park City (5), San Diego and Ithaca. By my count, that is a total of ten vacation homes. At one time, I have owned as many as three at once (what a headache). The big issue is always how to maintain the home in my absence. By…
Day Tripping In 1998 when I was at the apex of my banking career, I met Terry. I was on the Management Committee of Bankers Trust Company, where I ran both the Global Private Banking and was Vice Chairman of BT Alex. Brown, responsible for their Private Client Services business. It was a big job with loads of perks, easily the most I ever received. The biggest perk was a car and driver, which was…
Whining About the Future Have you seen the recently published maps of Europe with the heat profiles that we are suffering this summer highlighted? It was shocking when we saw those heat maps for the Eastern United States a few weeks ago, but now these European maps are astounding. We are witnessing before our very eyes the transformation of Sicily, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, much of Greece, the Western shores of Italy, the Adriatic…
Beyond Meat I am intrigued. Beyond Meat, the California start-up that launched its highly successful IPO a few months ago, now trades at over 100X sales. What’s especially interesting is that the concept of an alternative protein that provides a substitute for meat products (beef, pork and chicken) is hardly new. Where is tofu with its patent infringement claims? How upset must the ubiquitous veggie burger be at this turn of events? Even Bacos…
Hurting and Healing When I lived on Staten Island, I lived a mere several hundred yards from the place where Eric Garner was choke-hold wrestled to the ground and killed by police over a charge of selling untaxed cigarettes. Both of my sons lived even closer to that same spot. Tonight, I saw on the Democratic debate the discussion about reparations to African-American’s who descended from slaves. It seems 73% of African-Americans favor those…
Grindr Goes Global Admit it, you’ve heard of Grindr, the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people. My wife Kim and I have many gay, one trans and probably a lot of queer friends (even though I do not think I could adequately define that term with any precision). You notice I do not suggest we have bi friends, though we may, because how would we know unless we…