Normal Is As Normal Does Yesterday, Kim and I decided at noon to go to see a movie at 1:50 in the afternoon. That’s the sort of thing we might have done two years ago on a Saturday while living in Manhattan. But yesterday was Thursday and we are still living under a COVID cloud. So, to begin with, we are retired and do not have jobs that keep us occupied Monday through Friday. We…
The Himalayan Plains Wedged between the Hindu Kush to the West, Tibet to the North and the mysterious Bhutan to the East lies the fifteen hundred miles of solid mountain range, the highest in the world, known as the Himalayas. The Himalayas are so vast that they encroach on a number of countries, but the bulk of the range and the alluvial plains that flow southward from them constitute the country of Nepal. This area…
The Reverse Commute On Wednesdays I drive down towards downtown San Diego, which is where the University of San Diego is located. I was a commuter in New York City for years, but have never been in that groove (a.k.a. rut) here in San Diego. I teach from 7pm to 9:50pm on Wednesday nights and will do so through May of next year (actually 7pm to 8:50pm in the Spring). That has me leaving home…
The Hallowed Halls I am once again sitting here in the hallway of a building on the campus of the University of San Diego, where I am an adjunct professor in the graduate business program. When I was at Cornell’s graduate business school for ten years, I was not alone as an adjunct professor, but it was not like here. I do not know, nor do I plan to investigate the exact balance between full-time…
Bootstrapping Bootstrapping is a complicated word. Much more complicated than I had imagined until I started looking into it. I would ask you to play along with me and make a note to yourself about what you think of when someone uses the term bootstrapping. I don’t want to bias your thought process by adding a context. The term derives from the small leather loop or tab at the back of a man’s boot that…
Traveling to Enlightenment We went to see the new Ridley Scott movie The Last Duel last night at the local Angelika Film Center. Once again, it was very lightly attended with a mere 8-10 people in the well-appointed theater. The film is set in 1386 or so and chronicles what was the end stages of the Middle Ages in Europe. The movie makes reference to the economic hardship to noblemen and their estates by virtue…
Ode to the Agave On my 2.5 acre property on this sunny hillside, I estimate that I have three hundred agave plants of all sizes and several shapes. I have a series of books on succulents and cacti by Jeff Moore, one of renowned horticultural experts in the field. One of those books is a massive picture book titled Aloes and Agaves in Cultivation. The first 197 pages are dedicated to Aloes with the next…
To Mask or Unmask We are all created with multiple personalities, or at least multiple personas. We would all like to think we are the same person with everyone, but that is simply rarely the case. We are all made up of layers. I know that when my mother was alive, when I was with her, especially at her condo in Las Vegas, I was a respectful and dutiful son. I cared about what she…
Water for Lizards The Sara Gruen novel, Water for Elephants sold 10 million copies and became a hit movie staring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz. It caught my fancy because it follows the circus life of a young man who must drop out of veterinary school at Cornell and takes to tending elephants for a job. Elephants are strange beasts that inspire all sorts of imagination and whimsy. They are the largest land…
All About Tesla No matter which way I turn these days, I am running into Tesla. TO start with, as I have reported, I own a Tesla X that is now five years old and has a whopping 11,000 miles on the odometer. I have full autonomous functionality on the car and have used it only a half dozen times to show friends how it works. Quite frankly, I’m not a fan of autonomous driving,…