Elite Immersion I admit freely to being a devotee of MSNBC. I understand that it subjects me to some derision, certainly from my conservative friends, but also from some moderate friends and even some more liberal acquaintances that consider it invasive to their peace and harmony to submit to the daily media barrage of any sort. And if you spend an entire day listening (as I do via Sirius radio at times like during a…
Sevastopol I just left the Mendocino Peninsula which is just north of the Russian river. When you visit this part of Northern California, you learn that Russia once held a stronghold in this part of the state. There was a Russian colony in this part of California from 1812 to 1841. It seems the Russians thought Northern California was the land of plenty when it came to the bountiful forests and the abundance of sea…
Ought v. Naught The Conclusion I have now done most of what I set out to do with this project with two exception. Like any good plan, I have remained flexible enough to adapt it as I go. I originally set out to review our founding documents and to spend a moment thinking about the lessons from our creative content. The documents were fairly easy to define as The Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution,…
The Great American City If someone asked me what TV show was the first to make an impression on me, I would have to say it was a toss-up between Gunsmoke (started as radio in 1952, then TV from 1962-1975), Have Gun Will Travel (radio and TV from 1957-1963) and Bonanza (TV from 1959-1973). All westerns, which remains the true and original American art form when it comes to TV in my estimation. Last year…
Ought v. Naught The Songs One of the ways we most often communicate from our hearts is through song. The oral history of humankind is deeply rooted in the ballads that talk of deeds and dreams that reflect what we feel ought to be. One of the funniest bits ever performed was The Two Thousand Year Old Man done by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. In it, Reiner asks the two thousand year old man…
Old Guys Walking It’s 7:30 AM on a Tuesday morning in late September and Kim and I are heading north along the California coastline to visit with our friends from Sonoma with whom we are going up even further north to Mendocino for a couple of days. I woke up about an hour ago, which is my habit, and decided that based on the amount of travel we have today to get to Sonoma from…
The Fears of the Aged The older I get the more fearful I get. There was a time, not so long ago, after I had looked into the abyss of a career debacle, when I thought to myself that there really was nothing short of a random bear attack that would scare me. There is a bit of humor in the fact that my worst career debacle was while being the CEO of Bear Stearns…
Pitching Pups Now that we are in September, it seems to be time to get back into the gardening business I around the hilltop. Springtime seems like an obvious time for planting and growing things, but the autumn is not so intuitive. If I lived in the Northeast, autumn would be a time to prepare plantings for the harshness of winter, but this is San Diego, where the harshest month of December has an average…
Losing a Lime I just read in the Wall Street Journal that researchers have been working to understand why the average human brain has been shrinking in the last millennia or so. There is an old joke about the dinosaur speaking at a convention of other dinosaurs. He says to the group, “The outlook is not good gentlemen, meteors have been striking the earth, the climate is changing for the worse, vegetation is disappearing…and we…
Drawing Blood Blood is a very unique and special substance which sits at the heart (pun intended) of life as we know it. With expressions like “life-blood”, we seem to openly acknowledge that blood is the essence of life. Some people fully comprehend the composition of blood and understand that it is not at all the same from one being to another. We often like to say that we all bleed red just like everyone,…