A Free-Standing Facility I was listening to a television advertisement for a private cancer clinic. I find it mildly distressing that there is a need for specialized cancer centers, but the need must exist if someone has spent the money to make cancer treatment a for-profit enterprise. I’m not sure what it says that these centers need to advertise. Do people with cancer want to be pitched? Isn’t cancer the infamous C-word which is not…
An Abundance of Pleasantries Yesterday I got all wrapped up in slavery and today I am struck by the importance of finding pleasure in everyday tasks and interactions. I think of this because many of the slaves depicted in the Harriet movie I discussed yesterday made it a point to be pleasant people who went about their labors every day with a smile on their face and the pleasure of being alive and otherwise in…
Slaving Away While I am no archeologist or anthropologist, I think it’s agreed that man as we know him (homo sapiens) has existed for some 300,000 years. If we conservatively consider a generation as lasting an average of thirty years, that means there have been 10,000 generations of humans. If I stretch Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of expertise using the 10,000 Hour Rule, one might suggest that the human species should have learned a thing…
The Master of My Fate It is sometimes difficult to say what is ordinary and what is extraordinary. I was watching the movie Invictus, which is the story of the South African Rugby World Cup Championship in 1995 as inspired by Nelson Mandela, the then new president of South Africa. Besides the obvious and extraordinary performance by the South African Springboks, the real understory is about the perseverance of Nelson Mandela and the black…
Of Family and Friendships There is an old expression which technically comes our way from Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch says, “You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family.” I have said for a long time that I don’t find that expression 100% accurate. It is correct in its reference to family, but it is only half-correct when it comes to friends. Friends are perhaps…
Buttered Rubber I’ve never been much of a seafood fan. I have found myself in plenty of situations over the years where it was impossible to avoid eating seafood. Obviously, there is seafood and there is fishy seafood. I’ve enjoyed plenty of shrimp cocktail, fish & chips, Haddock fish sticks, Fillet-o-Fish sandwiches, crab cakes and even an occasional light, white broiled sole or swordfish or other flaky fish. What I steadfastly avoid is oily…
Three Calls and Six Texts I don’t do business dinners much any more. There was a time when it felt like I had one every night. I’m not sure I remember which job had the most of that, but I’ll bet it was during my private banking days. That was between 1994 and 1999 when I was 40-45 years-old and my children ranged between young and younger. I mention the children because what you mostly…
Why Don’t He Write? We all remember Dances With Wolves, that wonderful Kevin Costner epic about life on the plains for a post-Civil-War soldier who befriends the local Indian tribe and realizes that they are better people than most western settlers he knows. Costner gets to his lonely and desolate frontier fort by means of a buggy ride from a noxious frontiersman who eats pickled eggs and farts loudly. He has one great line as…
Donna Azucar In 1974 I was a student at Cornell majoring in Economics and Government. My studies had taken a decided focus on development economics and third-world government. It’s not complicated, my mother was a UN diplomat living in Rome and serving as a director of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She was the dominant force in my life, my role model, my muse. I assume I wanted to follow in her footsteps. …
Thick as Thieves Bankers stick together. The concept of a Club Deal and a Syndication were both invented by bankers. They love to hang together so that no one looks too stupid when a deal goes bad. Everyone likes to free ride on the other guy’s diligence or smarts. I should know, I was a senior banker for over forty years. And you’ve heard the expression “honor among thieves”? That implies that one banker would…