Hot Sauce Burn Milton wore his Afro with pride. He had no choice, that’s just how his hair grew. He wanted to be on the football team, but you had to be able to run at least 100 yards and do a push-up to do that. He wanted to play in one of the high school rock bands, but you had to play an instrument to do that. Even the chess team rejected him. Turns…
The White Horse Tavern I have an interesting relationship with lunch. Ever since I was a kid, I liked lunch above all other meals. When I was in grade school and I had won eight full weeks of summer YMCA day camp (by selling chocolate mints far and wide), we were supposed to bring a bag lunch. My problem was that my graduate student single mother did not have much time for mothering and making…
A Week is a Lifetime This morning I heard Morning Joe say that a week is a lifetime in politics. And this past week was a lifetime for Democrats in a bad way since the Mueller Report was not the condemning document they hoped it would be. For Trump and Trump-following Republicans, this past week was a lifetime in a good way. TO use Trump’s own exaggerated and false narrative, it was a complete exoneration…
The Bank of Dad I have a friend named Tad. Tad has had both an easy and difficult life all at once. I wish I was giving you a made-up name, but I’m not. The name Tad sort of reeks of privilege doesn’t it? It’s not quite Bootsy, but it’s right up there screaming White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant all at once. I’ve known Tad for thirty-five years now. Since he was twenty-five when we met,…
Vacation House Nightmare In the past, I have owned ten vacation homes. That number surprises even me. Given that this was over thirty-five years, that’s an average of 3.5 years per vacation house, which is a pretty meaningless statistic. Right now, I own two, but then again, not really. One is a house in Ithaca that I pre-gifted to Cornell University, so while I control it, I don’t really own it. In another two years…
The Treehouse in 1989 when I was reassigned to Toronto as punishment for a lapse of business judgement, I had gone through a divorce and wanted a home base. I looked for a house within an hour of where the kids lived and that meant either in the City or out in the Hamptons. Ah yes, the famous Hamptons, playground to the rich and famous of Manhattan and the share-house capital of the east coast.…
Writ Large Paul could not turn on cable news without hearing the term “writ large” over and over again. It is used to mean clear and obvious in context, and sometimes even a fully exaggerated form. The reason for Paul hearing this term being overused is a function of the goings on in Washington D.C. At this time of year, cherry blossoms are writ large all over the capital. One of Paul’s favorite movies was…
The Moment of Truth I have, for some reason, made a habit of living on the brink, usually looking squarely into the abyss. This has not been a life decision, but it does seem to be a career decision. I do not want to talk about the exact nature of the abyss I am looking into at the moment but suffice it to say that the fork in the road is rather dramatic. One route…
The Art of the Option Back in 1982 I was in an unusual position. All of my peers at my bank aspired to be line division managers. That was the traditional path to glory and was the first really important middle-management job tier. I had been jammed up with all my peers as a team leader of an important group of clients. I had two junior bankers working for me and a stable of big…
The Perils of the Pen I have been writing short stories for almost thirty years and have quite a collection. I have published them on story websites, I have published them in a book where I wove them together into a thematic storyline, I have even sent one off to a contest and had it made into a TV movie segment. The short story is my preferred form of writing because I have more than…