Dr. Mike In August, 1971, fifty-two years ago, I hitchhiked my way from Cleveland, Ohio to Ithaca, New York, a distance of 330 miles. I was traveling from my summer job at Case Western Reserve University to my freshman year matriculation at Cornell University. In those days, freshmen at Cornell mostly lived together in the ghetto of West Campus in what were called the University Halls, a set of six cinderblock three-wing dorms, four stories…
Itchy Brother Do you remember your cartoons from childhood? There were so many, but some were so good that they were memorable. Then again, it might have been that we watched them over and over again since the networks had figured out that kids actually liked the repetition and familiarity if bred, as opposed to the adults who scorned re-runs as below-grade entertainment. And in those days, TV advertising was geared to the mothers of…
The Many Me I have had a difficult day today and it is for the thinnest of reasons, but perhaps also, the most fundamental of reasons. This morning I did what I always tend to do when traveling, which is to get up somewhat earlier than Kim. As I usually do, I went down to the breakfast room ahead of her and proceeded to get started without her. I tend to do a full, what…
Dear Roger I have always been a fan of the name Roger and even named my oldest son Roger. The Roger I am addressing this to is a motorcycle friend of mine who is about as different from me as he could be. He is small and slender, but mostly he leans in the exact opposite direction that I do on almost every topic. Roger and I (along with Kevin) text almost every day about…
Death Pays a Visit When I was much younger, someone gave me a copy of the Gail Sheehy book Passages. It outlined some typical moments in our lives when certain things naturally occur. I specifically recall reading that while in our 30s we almost all come face to face with our own mortality, usually by way of the death of a loved one. We are then forced to grapple with the inevitability of our own…
Coming of Age Tomorrow is my 69th birthday, which means I will be starting my 70th year. I have never been a person who cares much about age as a defining characteristic. When I hit 30, 40, 50 and even 60 it was a non-event. I’m not so sure that 70 will be any different for me when it comes in a year. I think it’s fair to say that these days, except for the…
Back to Perfection I generally don’t aspire to perfection. I learned a long time ago that zero-default systems are too expensive to afford and that perfection is simply too difficult to attain. Every business and activity defines its tolerance levels with enough leeway to allow things to be almost perfect, but never quite totally perfect, and that’s just fine. I have always liked the movie The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In…
The Otto in Us All Today, as I wandered around NYC, I went to go see A Man Called Otto, starring Tom Hanks. Hanks has been the American cinematic Everyman for many years and as he ages along with the rest of us Baby Boomers (Hanks is two years younger than me) he is increasingly playing older roles, which seems both appropriate and very sensible. I don’t know how beloved he is to Millennials, but…
A World Gone Mad I am once again sitting in the sedate and peaceful setting of the NYC Cornell Club breakfast room. I find hat hen one travels, one’s view of the world takes on a different perspective. We awake in a different time zone with people we know still asleep and others we used to know less far away. The places around us are either or both more or less familiar and we tend…
Invictus In 1875, William Ernest Henley penned a short poem about the English tradition of maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. The last two lines of the poem are the most memorable and are: I am the master of my fateI am the captain of my soul. I was reminded of the poem while watching the Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman movie by the same name, Invictus. It is the story…