A Heavy Heart How does a man of conscience grapple with his own failures in an era of increasing pragmatism? It’s not a rhetorical question. It is a question I face this morning and have faced on several other mornings. The story begins with a business failure twelve years ago. The length of time is important because it highlights that some things never go away, and we must all ask ourselves if that is helpful…
The Shit-Show Yesterday the New York Times published an article that the Bond Market is screaming one of its worst signals by going into the rare and portentous inverted position. That means long rates are lower than short rates. That means people are getting bearish about the economy and liquidity is starting to dry up. In forty-five years on Wall Street I learned many lessons, but none starker than to pay attention to…
Rhode Scholarship I grew up in awe of Rhode Scholarships. There was something about its student/athlete mix of excellence that made me think that these thirty-two annual selectees were uber-special. The scholarship has sought to “instill a sense of civic-minded leadership and moral fortitude in future leaders.” I thought it was noteworthy when I heard that Bill Clinton was a Rhode Scholar. Then I met my friend Frank in 1991. Frank is a good…
Guns & Roses Guns do not regularly come into my consciousness, but this morning I got an email from a friend who hails from Oklahoma and who was home for a visit with dear old Mom. This guy is a motorcycling friend who now works as a movie art director. In other words, he is a design professional and a liberal and urban sort of guy. But his roots are in Osage country. He…
Rick’s Cafe The worst part of any road trips are the detours. On this motorcycle trip we already suffered the disappointment of having Rt. 33 down through the Los Padres National Forrest and into Ojai closed for construction. Today we had to circumvent the fantastic Angeles Crest ride. Both times we detoured through Santa Clarita and up through Palmdale. Going down we went on Bouquet Canyon Road and today we went up on Lake Hughes…
Free Falling One of the bucket list items from The Bucket List was skydiving. That’s not terribly original, but I assure you, it will never appear on any bucket list I produce. I like to say that I avoid activities that involve a lot of gravity. I know that Newton proved 300 years ago that gravity has the same impact on a falling object regardless of mass. I don’t believe it. When a toddler falls…
The Dude Mention The Dude and everyone immediately thinks of The Big Lebowski and the character played by Jeff Bridges. We know lots of things about The Dude, but mostly we know that The Dude abides. He accepts his lot in life and goes with the flow. That slacker mentality accounts for the popularity of the 1998 classic Coen Brothers film. By that date, much of the “Yutes” of America were in that frame of…
Desert Sunrise I was asked last night how I could work and still write stories every day. It’s 6am here in the desert and the sun is just rising. I am sitting and following my passion to write…each and every day. I not only write on days I work, but I write on days when I am not working (it’s Sunday today). I write in the morning. I write during breaks in the day. I…
Pete Goes Berber “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Pete thought as the Air Maroc flight from JFK to Casablanca lifted off. Pete had never even had a passport before about a month ago. He had never been outside the U.S. and had only been west of the Mississippi once before. In fact, it had never occurred to him to go overseas, but when the opportunity arose, his wife Nancy and his sons…
Changing Their Stars In 2009, as a board member of the international relief and development agency, CARE, I went with my family to India. We started in Jaipur, headed east to Agra and on to the Bay of Bengal and then north to Calcutta. We finished on the religious day of Holi in New Delhi. The entire trip was centered around visiting the CARE projects underway in those parts of India. Our job was to…