Route 66 The magic of Route 66 is as simple as the American dream of hitting the road west. Historically, it went from Chicago to St. Louis to Oklahoma City to Albuquerque to Kingman to Las Angeles. Starting on the shores of Lake Michigan, it took you to the Pacific Coast in Santa Monica. It was a road to adventure and it was a road to escape. Some say salvation lies in the pavement and…
Hot Tub Time Machine It’s Day 1 of my May trip to California. I’ve already had two meals with relatives, catching up on life as we know it in California. I’ve woken up at the butt-crack of dawn to get on a conference call with our London investment bankers (Always Something – the name I will one day call my yacht). And now I have spent a half hour in my luxurious spa, set amongst…
American Sharia Fundamentalism is about unwavering attachment to irreducible beliefs. What is an irreducible belief? Whatever someone wants it to be to serve his purpose. And that purpose can be for the greater good or it can have a high coefficient of self-interest, usually cloaked in false righteousness. What would we define as American fundamentalism? Technically, it represents the views espoused by the Niagara Bible Conference in 1897 that tried desperately to build a wall…
The Blue Horizon Life is about setting stakes out ahead of yourself and then fooling yourself into thinking that it’s a fun game to strive towards that stake. I chose those words quite carefully because all of those elements are at play. The operative words are Setting, Ahead, Yourself, Fooling, Thinking, Fun, Game, Strive, and Towards. When I was eight-years-old I got sent west by my mother with my childless aunt and uncle in their…
Trumpster Fire The New York Times (aka Failing Fake News) has landed with both feet on Donald Trump’s neck in a big way. They have laid bare his tax record (or approximations thereof) from 1985 – 1995. The bottom line is that he was, for much of that time, THE most unprofitable individual in the United States. This Master of the Universe, self-proclaimed best of the best businessman. He wrote-off more than $1 billion…
The Pit in My Teeth Life’s a bowl of cherries and Erma Bombeck wondered if that’s so, why did she alwasys find herself in the pits. I would change that a bit (pun intended) by asking, if life’s a bowl of cherries, why do I always have the pit in my teeth? Or maybe you like a more Forrest Gump approach. Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna…
Pete Goes Berber “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Pete thought as the Air Maroc flight from JFK to Casablanca lifted off. Pete had never even had a passport before about a month ago. He had never been outside the U.S. and had only been west of the Mississippi once before. In fact, it had never occurred to him to go overseas, but when the opportunity arose, his wife Nancy and his sons…
The Best Horse The Kentucky Derby made history yesterday by taking away the winning crown from Maximum Security and awarding it to Country House. Never has such a controversy and claim of foul so upended this historic horse race. The foul claim was that on a muddy track, Maximum Security drifted outward in its lane and bumped another horse to box it out. No one thinks it was intentional by the jockey, but rather…
Changing Their Stars In 2009, as a board member of the international relief and development agency, CARE, I went with my family to India. We started in Jaipur, headed east to Agra and on to the Bay of Bengal and then north to Calcutta. We finished on the religious day of Holi in New Delhi. The entire trip was centered around visiting the CARE projects underway in those parts of India. Our job was to…
Urban Nocturne Youngtown, Arizona started the retirement community concept in 1954, the year of my birth. Sun City didn’t open until 1960, but by then, age-restricted communities meant for those who wanted to be with other retirees, were well-rooted in the sun states. That is not an official starting gun or anything, it’s just my simple handle on when thinking about how to retire came into vogue. It’s like saying pensions began after WWII when…