Memoir

Mountain Climbing

I have always had a fascination with mountain climbing, not because it was something I wanted to do, but rather, because it was something I could not possibly see myself doing or ever wanting to do. What would compel a person to want to climb a mountain? It is an obvious question and an even more obvious answer with, “because it’s there” being the most common. But there are lots of things that are “there”…

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Love Memoir

Life Goes On

Indeed, life does go on. This simple phrase carries a lot of wisdom – through challenges, joys, difficulties, and triumphs, the world continues to turn and time moves forward. I have noted this reality on many occasions. The most obvious of them is when someone you know or love passes on. Yes, “There’s got to be a morning after” – that’s the opening line to “The Morning After,” the Academy Award-winning song from the 1972…

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Memoir Retirement

Croquet Picnic

Croquet as a sport has a fascinating history dating back several centuries. It’s thought of as an elegant lawn game that developed in Victorian England and is played in whites like tennis used to be played. Croquet appears to have evolved from a French peasant game called “paille-maille” (pall-mall) played in Languedoc in the 13th century. Players used mallets to hit wooden balls through hoops made of willow branches. By the 17th century, a similar…

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Memoir

Crowning Glory

I can remember going to the dentist when I was about 5 years old and living in Costa Rica. Needless to say, between the lack of fluoridation in the water and all the sugar cane, it’s amazing I have any dental enamel left in my mouth. I remember coming home after one check-up with the news that I had 10 new cavities to be filled. Those were the days of silver amalgam fillings. I still…

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Love Memoir Retirement

Why Do I Exist?

This is a profound philosophical question that has been pondered throughout human history. There are many perspectives on why humans exist, depending on different philosophical, religious, scientific, and cultural viewpoints. From an evolutionary perspective, humans exist as a result of natural selection and biological processes that have unfolded over millions of years. We didn’t come into being for a purpose; rather, we emerged through evolutionary mechanisms. That is the definition of Darwinism and it exhibits…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir

Clubbing in Retirement

Don’t worry, you will not be hearing about Rich and Kim at Brooklyn Mirage or the Butterfly Room in SoHo. My first real dance club ever was in 1979 when on my first trip to Europe for business. We had just formed the World Corporate Division and I was one of the new offices assigned to cover the world’s multinational corporations. The bank thought it important that we all get a taste of the international…

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Love Memoir

A Good Year

One of my favorite movies is a Russell Crowe film from almost twenty years ago called A Good Year. The attraction to me is somewhat obvious. It is the story of a kick-ass London bond trader who inherits an estate in Provence from his uncle, someone he dearly loved but who he ignored for the past decade as he played out his career ambitions. The set-up is that the trader gets suspended for being too…

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Love Memoir

Mothers

Tomorrow is Mothers Day and it has caught me somewhat unaware. While I am like most people and regularly forget or ignore Fathers Day, I have done a reasonable job over the years of remembering Mothers Day. I imagine that I am in the top 10% of people who revere their mothers and consider them the primary motivator of their lives. I was raised, from start to finish, by my mother. She is responsible for…

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Business Advice Memoir

Capitalism Redefined

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, free markets, voluntary exchange, and the pursuit of profit. It emerged as the dominant economic system in Western societies during the Industrial Revolution, replacing feudalism and mercantilism. The key features of capitalism include several socio-economic elements. There is private property rights wherein individuals and businesses, rather than the state, own capital assets like land, factories, and equipment. There is market-based allocation…

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Business Advice Memoir

Quantum Finance

Many years ago during the height of my days at Bankers Trust (late 1980s, I think), our then Chairman, Charlie Sanford (rest his soul) got on a kick of predicting the future and wrote an paper that he presented at a gathering at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. The paper was titled Quantum Finance, and it was a prediction that our consumer financial system would evolve into a complex kluge of payment processing where…

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