Sleeping is for Kids I’m on yet another intercontinental flight tonight. And guess what I’m doing? That’s right, I’m not sleeping. I am on a Delta Boeing 767-300 that departed JFK at 4:28 pm and is landing at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 5:20 am local time. That’s a 6:39 minute flight covering 3,214 miles. I’m in seat 2A in business class. There are no first class seats. Only Emirates and Singapore and the like…
An Angry Man Back in 1987, over thirty years ago, I had a young man working for me who was very well-liked by everyone. He was a Midwesterner who was smart and shrewd, but generally mild-mannered. He had been a football player at a Division II school, and while tall and lean, he was also considered by everyone to be a strong athlete. In the two years he had worked for me, I had not…
A Pang of Creativity I just saw something that knocked my socks off and that only happens occasionally. After 6+ years of working on the New York Wheel and trying to marshal all the creative energy I could muster from the people who build things like that, I got involved with a similar project in Dallas that wanted to do the same thing. I spent a fair bit of time episodically on the project…
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…