Jumping Jimmy I am starting this story today because yesterday the news shot around the world that Jimmy Cayne, the controversial long-time CEO of Bear Stearns died at age 87, probably with a cigar in his mouth. I want to tell my story about Jimmy Cayne, but I probably need to take my time and not rush it to print since it brings up many mixed emotions, some of which are not particularly attractive. Therefore,…
Total Recall It’s late Christmas morning and most of the presents have been unwrapped and the bows and ribbons saved for another future gift wrapping while the wrapping paper gets crumpled up and thrown into a trash bag. Kim has perfected the Christmas morning program with everyone getting a big stocking stuffed with small joking wrapped gifts. The objective is to find things that are mildly appropriate and amusing and yet not so over-the-top that…
Andre the Giant In 1946 in the little town just 40 miles East of Paris, a man was born to a family of Eastern European immigrants (specifically Bulgaria and Poland). Andre Rene Roussimoff weighed thirteen pounds at birth and carried the nickname Dede. Right from the start he was taller and bigger than all the other children in his village and while a trained clinician might have diagnosed gigantism at an early age, the family…
Workin’ At The Carwash Blues In 1974, while I was working at the Cornell Plantations for the summer, doing 12-hour shifts (7am – 7pm) before running off to a little league practice for the team of seven-year-olds I was coaching, and before picking up my summer-fling girlfriend, Margaret, from her job at the nursing home at 11pm and getting to bed or not, whenever, I would listen to Jim Croce sing his latest hit. While…
Caution: Boric Acid I have written many times in passing about the country of Chile. For such a small country, far from the United States, farther from Europe, and with a turbulent course of history during the span of our lifetime, it holds a disproportionately important role in my consciousness. I have thought long and hard about why Chile enjoys such a place in my sense of history and I have a number of thoughts…
The End of Family Gardening American roots run deep in the family farm. The development of the nation from its original thirteen colonies after their war of independence through the ensuing nineteenth century of westward discovery, settlement and expansion, pretty much took the same path with one territory after another becoming a product of the family farm. The term “family farm” is most often applied to an intergenerational wealth transfer protocol that allows for the…
Falling Down and Being True I tend not to be drawn to keeping up with celebrity lifestyles. Who is married or getting divorced to whom? What’s hot and what’s not? Who’s got a killer series on Netflix and is Netflix really the happening place for the real glitterati that are making their move to the A List? I find it all mildly interesting, but its very easy to get to feeling like a groupie with…
The Sovereign State of AT&T When I was in college and studying Latin American political history, we were reviewing the recent political changes in Chile. While a small country, Chile was symbolic because it was very much an isolated country on the far side of the world. In the days before the Panama Canal, anything on the Pacific side of the Andes was a long way from home and if you went th Chile, unlike…
Pershing Square I am writing this story for my pal Larry, who will be worried as hell for the next 1,300 or so words that I am going to say something in writing and that it will be put onto the internet, which is immutable as an NFT, and that it will be something that will stick to his foot like a random piece of dirty chewing gum. It gets me chuckling inside just to…
New Story – Old Saga I’m sitting at the San Diego Airport with Kim, having just had a mediocre burger before boarding a Red-eye flight on Jet Blue to NYC. We get in at 5am at JFK and then hopefully get our checked bags (filled with Christmas gifts for the kids) fast enough to schlep over to the cab stand, which is a country mile from the main Terminal 5, and get on the GCP…