Interregnum It is often said that the most dangerous time in any country is that time in between one governing reign and another. The same is said of wars, that the times just before and just after the formal cessation of hostilities is actually the time when there is more risk afoot for the general population. Things and, indeed, people get lost in the transition, things fall between the cracks (does that really make sense…
Timeout The modern world is all about near constant engagement with media and outside stimulation. I read more and more about the growing crisis about youthful mental agitation which pre-dated COVID, but was clearly ratcheted up by the Pandemic. The growing amount of mental disruption and distress is particularly acute in young people who get a disproportionate amount of their interactions through social media. It used to be that difficult interactions among youngsters took the…
This is a story written for me as a late 70th Birthday gift by my younger son, Thomas. I’m both incredibly impressed and moved by this story and am proud to share it with you (with his blessing). It’s longer than my normal story, but well worth the read in my opinion. Please be sure to click through for the epilogue at the end. Mojo Gubbins My dad doesn’t really do gifts. Let me clarify.…
Heeeeere’s Donny There are few movie lines more memorable than Jack Nicholson sticking his head through a freshly axed bathroom door saying with a devilish smile, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” The Shining, from which the line comes, is also right up there in the pantheon of scary movies. Well friends, we are in our own scary movie and while I need to substitute Johnny with Donny, the urgency and extreme nature of the threat to us all…
Man Interrupted There has been a theme in recent cinematic content about interrupted lives, first with Girl, Interrupted and then Boy Interrupted. Girl, Interrupted was a 1999 film based on an earlier book that details the life of a young middle class woman who gets put into a mental institution for attempting suicide. Boy Interrupted is a 2009 true-life version of the same thing except its about a boy who is diagnosed as bipolar-polar and…
Dog Fight Right after my normal Sunday morning bagel run, Kim called to say that we had a problem with Buddy. It seemed that he had gotten bitten by another dog at the place where he is boarding for the weekend. I needed to go and pick him up and take him to the vet to see if there was any serious damage. When I got to Colean’s house, he was brought out and while…
What We Value I pretty much ignored the “Trial of the Century” about the O.J. Simpson accusations that he killed his wife and her lover. That happened in 1995 and I was close to being at the height of my career in investment banking. I was busy running around the world and building a global investment business. It was the year that my youngest son was born. The last thing I cared about was the…
Work/Life Balance Throughout my working career, the subject of work/life balance was a constant. We all know the story of the workaholic that overworks himself to the point of ignoring his familial obligations. He comes home after the kids are asleep, he cancels vacations at the last minute. He leaves all the child rearing to his wife. And he always misses the baseball game or recital of his children. I occasionally suffered from all of…
The Stone Menagerie In the 1944 play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams wrote an autobiographical memory story that launched his writing career and put him into the Pantheon of great American writers. It is a subtle story about a middle class American family with a mother living below the standards to which she had become accustomed from her youth, a father that is woefully absent, an underachieving son who yearns for independence and a grown…
The Man of the Decade There is an old story about Donald Trump creating a phony Time’s Person of the Year cover to hang in one of his golf resorts. When we all heard that, we felt it was a pathetic sign of what a narcissist Trump is and how desperately he craves adoration and attention. This week, Trump has legitimately made it to the cover of Time magazine with the headline, “If he wins”.…