Timber! Over the last year, as part of my succulent education, I watched an Agave Americana on my back hillside grow its once-in-a-lifetime seed stalk to a height of about thirty feet. The base of the Agave looks like the Queen Victoria Agava but the scale of stalk quickly outsized the Agava plant. The base is about three feet high and perhaps two feet across, but the base of the stalk grew to about ten…
Drafting The word draft is one of those English words with not only multiple meanings, but the word takes the form of a verb, an adverb, an adjective and a whole array of nouns all at once . You can draft a draft of a proposal to draft a drafting specialist by sending him a draft as a down payment to help correct flaws of a drafty room before he or she gets conscripted in…
Double New Yorker I wish the New Yorker magazine treated its subscribers like American Express has chosen to, with a designation on the card that declares “Member Since 1976”. I must admit, I am proud of that designation. And here is the thing, in the forty-five years of my membership, I have never once not paid the AMEX bill in full every month. It used to be that there was no choice to do otherwise,…
The Door to the Castle I got a call today from my colleague Damiano from his home in Palermo, Sicily. He called to congratulate me on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamal Harris today and said that he and his family had watched the whole inauguration on live TV from their home overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea that lies between their home and the mainland of Southern Italy. I am very lucky to have hooked…
Green Acres When we think of the shift in American demographics from rural to urban, we generally think of the period from 1870 to 1920 even though that has been an inexorable trend over our entire history as a nation. We have gone from being 95% rural in Colonial days to being less than 20% rural in recent history. I’m sure we are all very aware of this trend, but what we may be less…
A Trip Down The Nile A few years ago I got it in my head that on the short list of places I wanted to go was to Egypt. I have fond memories of traveling to Egypt on a school trip in high school (keep in mind that I lived and went to school in Rome, which is only 1,300 miles from Cairo, a quick flight across the Med). Marc Antony was able to woo…
Life in Microcosm My first wife, Mary, had a penchant for collecting miniatures. I always found that somewhat humorous since no one would accuse me of being a miniature anything. But she would always hunt for miniature items either as remembrance for life events or even just everyday life. She would keep her miniatures with little bits of sticky putty in upright and refinished printers drawers that used to hold small lead letters used in…
Getting Paid I have a friend who worked with me for fifteen years twenty years ago. Think about that for a moment, its been longer since we worked together than the time we worked together. He was one of three of us partners of our firm that were always called upon to act as Master of Ceremonies for whatever gathering we had. I guess that was because we each had a degree of presence that…
Remember Bitcoin? About six years ago I helped a fellow Cornell Business School alumnus launch a new venture capital fund. It was to be focused on Fintech or financial technology companies, an area that held a great deal of interest to me since the democratization of finance had been a topic of thought by me and those around me during my career for a long time. The penultimate Chairman of Bankers Trust Company, the formative…
Terrorizing Myself These days, my morning protocol is to start by understanding what obligations for video calls or meetings I have in the early morning. That is a normal situation I imagine for many people who live on the West Coast since we are three hours displaced from New York and eight or nine hours offset from Europe. While I have done plenty of business with Asia over the years, my connections do not tend…