A Walk in the Garden I am probably 75% done with our Cecil Memorial Garden. What started as a solo effort has become a team effort, which is always a better thing for a host of reasons. The team ends up being me, Kim and Handy Brad. We are doing what we each like most and are probably best at, which means we are probably optimizing the project in terms of quality, speed of execution…
Playing God Capital punishment as a topic ranks right up there with abortion and euthanasia as the big three to throw any social gathering into disarray if they are thrown into polite conversation. People can joke about pornography (perhaps not snuff films, but certainly most sexual varieties of the art form). But I find that people are simply too invested in the underlying ethics of life and death. As I contemplate this, there is certainly…
Bob’s Your Uncle When I come up with a story title that is a familiar expression to me, given that I have now written and posted 652 stories on this blog, I like to check myself and make sure I haven’t already used the title once before. Yes, I have actually found myself doing that and I’m not embarrassed to say that. I consider it less about a failing memory and more about finding an…
Educating Myself My daughter called me today very concerned about Mayor DeBlasio’s announcement that he intends on opening NYC public schools in the Fall, but only for two or three days per week, so more or less half time. The idea is to use existing facilities and using them to the maximum social distancing capacity and filling in with online learning of the sort used this Spring around the world. She was both concerned about…
Of Rocks & Trees and Citrus & Quail The world is in a funny place right now. I spoke to a friend of mine who lives in Vancouver. He reads my blog so I expect he will recognize himself. I recently called him. I spent four years on his board of directors. The company was a small public company traded on the LondonStock Exchange. We spent most of our time trying to figure out how…
Upbeat Yes, I read the monthly AARP newsletter. There, I said it and I’m proud of it. I always used the excuse that I consider myself a retirement professional since I taught a pensions course for ten years at Cornell and I wrote a book called The Global Pension Crisis in 2013, which got reasonably well-read and even cited academically in the field (my academic claim to fame). However, I also read the AARP newsletter…
The Morning After Sitting outside, starring at our front door, are seven little critters, birds to be precise, who are wondering what’s next for me and Kim. They are a roadrunner that looks like Snoopy’s Woodstock. There is an owl who looks like Owl Jolson from Looney Tunes who likes to “Singa…..Like a moon and a June in the Springa”, There is a Hawk that looks regal, but ever so menacing as he sails across…
We Laugh and We Cry Kim’s best friend Cecil died this morning. He had a heart condition for some years and despite Kim’s best efforts to medicate him, exercise him, cook healthy fresh food for him, and brushing his teeth every evening to keep the plaque monster at bay, he still died. We can’t be sure, but the very empathetic vet who cared for him in his last hour said he believed it was his…
We Laugh and We Cry Kim’s best friend Cecil died this morning. He had a heart condition for some years and despite Kim’s best efforts to medicate him, exercise him, cook healthy fresh food for him, and brushing his teeth every evening to keep the plaque monster at bay, he still died. We can’t be sure, but the very empathetic vet who cared for him in his last hour said he believed it was his…
He Made Me Laugh He was not 2,000 years old, but only 98. He did not invent the cure for cancer or climate warming. He did not lead the nation through a devastating war. He did not make any big feature award-winning films or wright Top-40 songs. He did not run for or hold any grand public offices. He did father one of the great movie-makers and TV sitcom stars of our age in Rob…