We will get picked up tomorrow at 4:30am and spend the next eleven hours or so doing our best to go from our little hilltop here in San Diego to the paved and gloriously lighted streets of midtown Manhattan. This trip has become a holiday ritual for the past five years and the seasonal pre-Christmas gathering has been a family tradition now for seventeen years (since I sold the last of my Park City ski…
Kim tells me that today is Buddy’s one year “Gotcha” anniversary. That means we got Buddy a year ago today. The woman that groomed our sweet Betty girl called Kim while we were in NYC last year and told her that one of her other clients had a friend who was trying to rehome a little brown toy poodle and would we be interested. The first stop we made once we were home was to…
It was the Star that led the way. In the vast expanse of the night sky, where countless stars twinkled like diamonds scattered across dark velvet, one star shone with exceptional brilliance. This was no ordinary star – it was a divine beacon, placed in the heavens for a singular purpose. Far to the east, in lands of ancient wisdom and learning where men and a few token women gather in Congressional chambers to do…
I limit my social media engagement to three sites at this point. I am a viewer of Instagram (I never have posted) and I find it a nice and easy way to follow the whereabouts and doings of my children and nieces/nephews. I started on Instagram specifically because I found that my kids were posting away from me when I was on Facebook and I decided to get sneaky and sign up for Instagram to…
The power of media is a longstanding source of commercial interest among the wealthiest people of the world. I recently saw a documentary by Ken Burns about Benjamin Franklin, the man often referenced as the most globally powerful American of his era and perhaps the most influential Founding Father of what has become the most powerful country in the world. Franklin was indeed an influential figure in early American media, and was so significant in…
The world is filled with dictators, despots and strong men. The world has pretty much always been filled with dictators, despots and strong men. I hate to say it, but I can find no reason not to expect that it will always be so. My entire life has intersected with these strong men, beginning with my earliest years growing up in Venezuela. My mother was a development officer at the Rockefeller Foundation in Venezuela from…
I have been a CEO of eight companies (I actually had business cards that said CEO) during my career and I have run fourteen distinct businesses for which I was the primary decider of strategy and tactics. The term Chief Executive Officer seems like its a week defined role, but saying you are a CEO can range from being the head of a small start-up company with two people and a dog, to being the…
Given that we live in the county that occupies the bottom of California, just above the Mexican border at Tijuana, we find ourselves regularly heading north and debating the best way to do that. For reasons I can guess at, but cannot really explain, we do not head south into Mexico…ever. We used to go down to Cabo San Lucas with some regularity and I used to visit the west coast of Mexico mainland with…
About seven years ago, Kim and I were headed to a motorcycle ride that was to take us all across the mainland of Greece. In searching for the cheapest business class seat to that distant locale, I found that Turkish Airways had a great flight direct from JFK to Istanbul. From there it was a small hop to Athens. Since Kim had always wanted to go to Istanbul and I hadn’t been there for a…
It is not so unusual for guys of my age to say that they only wear a jacket and tie anymore to weddings and funerals. The last suit (and I really do hope it is the very last suit) I bought was last year when I needed to buy a tan suit (the sort that got President Obama into trouble) for my son Thomas’ wedding last Labor Day (2023). I haven’t worn it since and…