I have a long and involved affiliation with Venezuela. In 1946, my mother, at the age of thirty, “joined the Foreign Legion” by hiring on to the Rockefeller Foundation to go to Venezuela to do rural indigenous development work. She was literally choosing to escape a turbulent five years on both the global and personal fronts and trade in her decade of work with the New York State Welfare Department for a new adventure. After…
Yesterday, Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani met face-to-face in the Oval Office of the White House. This was characterized by many as a timeless contrast of the fascist and the communist. Fascism is a far-right authoritarian political ideology characterized by dictatorial leadership (concentrated power in a single leader or party), forcible suppression of opposition (elimination of political pluralism and dissent), extreme nationalism (often with racial or ethnic superiority themes), militarism (glorification of military strength and…
In 1985 I was running the largest merchant banking unit in my bank, something called the New York City Division. It was what all my peers aspired to do, but I found it sort of boring to be doing things like helping ITT do its next acquisition or helping Ron Perlman at Revlon reshape his juggernaut. I was asked to go up to talk to our Vice Chairman, who said the Management Committee wanted to…
Today I have been watching the latest Ken Burns extravaganza called The American Revolution, another PBS documentary, this one about the most important revolution in the history of mankind. We all tend to think that it was the French Revolution which was the most impactful, but I think it might be debatable based on how we define “impact”. Most people would be surprised to learn that before heading to Wall Street some fifty years ago,…
Every once in a while a coincidence will happen that makes you wonder about who exactly has his hand on the tiller of the universe. Back in 2006, Kim and I were meeting some friends for dinner at a restaurant on the upper east side of Manhattan. Neither of us frequented the area, but Kim had an orthopedic appointment nearby. In fact, I noted that I had last been in that same area in 2005…
Tonight I am entertaining Kim’s family for the second night. They are here to honor the death a few days ago of her and their sibling. Unfortunately, since everyone grieves differently, some in the family are simply not ready to convene, so its all a bit of a broken play. Kim is at her final dress rehearsal for her show, which plays tomorrow and Saturday. She is going through a lot this week, so I…
For almost the first time in a year, Kim and I watched MSNBC last night. It was strange to see all the familiar faces that have been absent from our consciousness for the past year. Yesterday was a watershed day on this hilltop. At about 2:30pm, Kim’s brother, Jeff, lost his hard-fought battle and succumbed to the ages of eternity. His twelve-day hospital rollercoaster ride going from ER to ICU to Stroke Ward and back…
Back in 1989 I was given responsibility in my business brief for my bank’s business in Canada. At the time, that consisted of one office in Toronto that took the form of what was called a Schedule B bank, which was basically a small banking office that performed all the basic functions of a bank. The operative word in that description is small. Canada was approximately 10-11 times smaller than the U.S. economy. The United…
From my perch in my living room, if I look out to the west I have to look through floor-to-ceiling glass windows out to my deck and then through a 42” high plate glass railing out to the distant vista beyond. It’s a tad misty this morning, but as I look out in that direction, what I see is an end-to-end array of rolling hills that populate the dozen or so miles from this hilltop…
During the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!, the 1970 epic war film which depicted the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 from both the American and Japanese perspectives (considered one of the more historically accurate Pearl Harbor films, co-directed by American and Japanese filmmakers), the Japanese pilots never actually say, “Bansai!” They do say “Tora! Tora! Tora!” That phrase (which means “Tiger, Tiger, Tiger” in Japanese) became famous not just historically, but culturally (mostly thanks to…