A Secret Failure They say that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. I’m going to guess that nobody who is reading this story has ever bothered to figure out who first uttered that phrase. It is one of those pithy credos that gets made into posters and etched into rocks that are sold to people to hold down papers on their desk with all the other kitschy things they’ve accumulated over their…
Back to School Over the weekend, I spoke to my daughter, who has spent the majority of the summer (the last six weeks since school let out) at our family home, Homeward Bound, in Ithaca. We were there with her and her family for the first week or so and then we headed back West. She stayed on and lived the life of fireflies, lunch in the pool for the kids, husband John doing his…
On Becoming an Elephant When it rains it pours. We’ve all heard that many times in our lives. What hasn’t been so well acknowledged is that when it does rain and therefore does pour, it does so even harder when you have planned a parade or a picnic. My retirement has been in process for twenty months now and the four primary activities I brought to the table to give me at least transitional purpose…
The House of the Rising Sun My sleep patterns leave a lot to be desired. I am blessed at the age of 67 to be without significant maladies. I take medication for high blood pressure, but they seem to work well in keeping me at a BP level that is normal and apparently without major health complications. I do not suffer from reflux or any of the other annoying gastrointestinal problems that often plague aging…
Reminding Myself Every Day It’s hard these days to not think about the good and the bad in people. The polarization of political views is inextricably caught up in a series of values that cut very deep into all of our consciousness. Regardless of which way you lean, it is clear your angle of lean has increased a great deal of late. You may not have changed your beliefs at all, but the chances are…
Back Up the Truck For the forty-five years of my Wall Street career the expression to “back up the truck” refers to something a guy by the name of Tom Pope said to me. Tom had grown up in the International Department of our bank in the first half of the 1970’s. That was when the domestic banking market was in its decline due to large loan losses on loans to REITs that had gone…
And the Livin’ is Easy Summertime was written in 1934 by George and Ira Gershwin with a lyrical assist from DuBose Heyward, the author of Porgy, on which the opera, Porgy and Bess is based. It is at once a jazz song and a folk song and as such may mark the beginning of the trend towards classic black music of the South. Much has been made of the use of the word “and” after…
Juggling Tasks For the forty-five years of my active career, I recognized that the art of juggling tasks and prioritizing the use of one’s time was simply part of the job of working. I also knew that it was part of life in general outside of work, but rarely found that the personal tasks had the sort of urgency of triage that they had in business situations. Now I was never in the military and…
A Walk in Her Shoes Kim and I did what we always do on Thursday morning, we found an excuse to absent ourselves from our house so that the cleaning crew could do their thing without having to work around us. I think it bothers them less than it bothers us because watching others clean your personal space is less than comfortable no matter who they are. We use the time to do our errands…
Remembering How to Teach I taught at Cornell for ten years. When you start teaching you learn how to develop a course, write a syllabus, prepare lectures, prepare assigned reading, prepare cases and assignments, prepare tests and administer and present all of that. A wiley old professor of mine (now rest his soul), told me he figured he put in five hours of preparation for each hour of lecture that he gave. I found in…