Vini Vidi Vici Venezuela I blame the crisis in Venezuela on my mother. At the end of 1953 my mother had already lived in Venezuela, working for the Rockefeller Foundation, for seven years. She had married a Venezuelan citizen, bought a house, joined several social and sports clubs (Mom was an athlete), given birth to two daughters (the second born in Caracas, so a natural Venezuelan citizen), hired a governess and even bought a dog.…
Rubber Chicken Last night was the annual Cornell Big Red Bash for the College of Business of Cornell. Kim and I attended this event at the cavernous setting of Guastavino’s, which is built into the base of the 59th Street Bridge. I’m not sure it is intended but partying under a bridge has a certain Three Billy Goats Gruff aspect to it. It conjures up images of Scandinavian trolls hiding under the bridge to…
Living the Dream I am sitting at the Bloomberg Center cafeteria on the Cornell Tech Campus on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. Back in 2012 when I began the New York Wheel project, I was in lockstep during the NYC approval process (called the ULURP process) with the Cornell Tech Campus project. We were destined to open at about the same time, but after six years, that project went off the rails while the…
The Tattersall of Life I’ll bet just about everyone has one or two Tattersall shirts in their wardrobe whether they know it or not. Tattersall is the pattern of plaid or check that is woven into the cloth such that there is a faint cross-hatch of color on a usually white background. The checks created are small (quarter inch or so) and there are most often alternating colors of the defining lines. Thus, you might…
Worship Yet another AR-15 assault, this time on a Chabad Jewish Center in San Diego on the last day of Passover. This follows the Sri Lankan anti-churchgoer attacks on Easter Sunday and the mosque attacks in New Zealand. That’s three for three for the Big Three. As it turns out, worship is risky these days. Some would say that worship is more needed than ever. Anti-religious terrorism and gun violence are horrific acts that deserve…
Inside My Head These are strange times. They are strange for me, strange for my family and strange for my country and the world. I am certainly the first human being in the history of mankind to pass into irrefutable old age (65) and spend too much time thinking about my state and the state of the world. I am sure that no one thinks about stuff as clearly as I do. This is why…
The Seriousness of the Moment Jill gently pushed her way through the crowd, heading for the west exit from the ballroom. She just wanted to get to the elevators and then she knew it would be a quick trip home at this hour. Her job required her to come to these big functions at times and, truth be told, it probably also meant she was supposed to use the networking opportunity of 500 of her…
I Cry for Stalin I recently watched for the nth time, The Death of Stalin and found it hilariously tragic or perhaps tragically hilarious. It is fun to imagine that powerful men might be the bumbling yet funny idiots that the Politburo of 1953 appears to be in this movie. The scene of them discovering and then moving Stalin’s non responsive body into his bed may be one of the funniest scenes in movie history.…
Even the Vikings Had to Stretch Make no mistake, Wall Street is a battle zone. There is excess aggression and emotion everywhere you look. I have often thought that the only thing that separates successful Wall Street professionals from the rest of the world is their level of drive and ability to withstand pain. Sometimes the battle rages for gain alone, but often the battle is for the battle sake. Worst of all is…
Le Weekend When I was in high school I learned that in France they had adopted the English word weekend into their language and culture, which had not previously existed (and therefore had not single word to represent). This became Le Weekend. It seems the concept has more going on with it than I had realized. The designation of years, months and days connect to cyclicality of the heavens. Solar orbits, lunar cycles and terrestrial…