Double New Yorker I wish the New Yorker magazine treated its subscribers like American Express has chosen to, with a designation on the card that declares “Member Since 1976”. I must admit, I am proud of that designation. And here is the thing, in the forty-five years of my membership, I have never once not paid the AMEX bill in full every month. It used to be that there was no choice to do otherwise,…
The Door to the Castle I got a call today from my colleague Damiano from his home in Palermo, Sicily. He called to congratulate me on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamal Harris today and said that he and his family had watched the whole inauguration on live TV from their home overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea that lies between their home and the mainland of Southern Italy. I am very lucky to have hooked…
Green Acres When we think of the shift in American demographics from rural to urban, we generally think of the period from 1870 to 1920 even though that has been an inexorable trend over our entire history as a nation. We have gone from being 95% rural in Colonial days to being less than 20% rural in recent history. I’m sure we are all very aware of this trend, but what we may be less…
A Trip Down The Nile A few years ago I got it in my head that on the short list of places I wanted to go was to Egypt. I have fond memories of traveling to Egypt on a school trip in high school (keep in mind that I lived and went to school in Rome, which is only 1,300 miles from Cairo, a quick flight across the Med). Marc Antony was able to woo…
Terrorizing Myself These days, my morning protocol is to start by understanding what obligations for video calls or meetings I have in the early morning. That is a normal situation I imagine for many people who live on the West Coast since we are three hours displaced from New York and eight or nine hours offset from Europe. While I have done plenty of business with Asia over the years, my connections do not tend…
The Elves of Nature This Monday morning I am sitting in my office wondering about how to begin my week. It is another clear-sky morning here in San Diego with an anticipated high of 71 degrees. I see my weather app predicts twelve more days of sun, 70ish weather with 0% chance of rain. So, there is nothing to worry about weather-wise and I can get no guidance from the forecast since I am free…
Todd, I Presume Every day we take risks and we try to manage them as best we can. We do not live in a perfect world and no matter what we do, we cannot live life without some risks. Hopefully we minimize the big risks and get lucky for the rest. Can any of us do better than that on a day-by-day basis? When it comes to personal household security some people believe in fortification.…
Getting Big Enough Ever since I can remember, for at least the last sixty years, I have lived with the reality that I am too big. The relative measure that causes me to say that has nothing to do with life insurance charts that define healthiness based on a height/weight ratio or a BMI (Body Mass Index). I long ago decided that I fall outside those standards and that they just don’t apply to me…
Working Stiff I have a strange feeling that 2020 was a buffer year for me, not so much by design, but by happenstance. After many years (I mark them as starting in 1966 at the age of twelve…so call it fifty-five years), the inertia of work has set in. People talk about “failing retirement” as a cute tongue-in-cheek way of bragging that they are so busy in retirement or see such a demand for their…
Weather Station Echo Charlie Alpha Back in January, 1966 we moved from Middleton, Wisconsin to Poland Spring, Maine. The names alone tell you a lot about that transition. Middleton can’t help but sound pretty ordinary. Wisconsin is the Dairy State, where Maine is Vacationland. One doesn’t allow you to buy margarine rather than good ole butter within its boundaries and the other has so many French Canadians in it that one car dealership used the…