When you get to my stage of life you spend a lot of time thinking about seasons. I watched a nice movie the other day called The Last Rifleman, starring Pierce Brosnan as the last member of the Royal Ulster Rifles Regiment from Northern Ireland that landed in Normandy on Sword Beach in 1944. After his wife’s death, he “escapes” from his managed care facility to travel by car, bus, train and ferry to get…
I literally just finished my piece titled Getting Too Damn Hard about the changes imminent to the American home ownership dream. Aging and the path forward is on my mind, as it is to varying degrees with almost everyone I know and encounter. I have a hard time taking it too seriously when a 30-year old Stretch-U kinesiologist tugging at my edema-prone ankle talks about the woes of getting older, but others more of my…
I am quickly coming to the conclusion that it is simply getting too damn hard to pursue the American Dream in the way in which we have all grown up to know it. What I am talking about is independent, free-standing home ownership. There are many reasons for this conclusion, but I will start with one and ramble from there. This Dream is predicated on what used to be one of the key differentiators about…
Back in 1997, an informal group of us at Bankers Trust got together and decided to make some venture capital investments. I could say lots of profound things about how financially savvy we all were (we actually were somewhat), but the real issue was that we were all getting paid way too much and had too much money sloshing around in our bank accounts thanks to the excessive bonus structure we enjoyed in the banking…
After we moved to this hilltop five years ago, one of the things we felt the property lacked was outdoor lighting. I have always felt that good outdoor lighting does wonders to improve the look and feel of a nice property. A dark shapeless house is just that unless it is well lighted. I actually think a so-so house can be made to look like a spectacular house from sunset until midnight (assuming that’s as…
I spent the better part of forty years working in Midtown Manhattan. I started in 1976 reporting for duty at 280 Park Avenue (between 48th and 49th Streets), and was there almost to the end of the firm in 1999. The Bankers Trust building was a mainstay during those years when other banks like Manufacturers Hannover Bank, Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank and J.P. Morgan all went through mergers and consolidations with their offices swirling…
It’s only mid-November and we are seriously into decorating the house for Christmas. Most years that doesn’t happen until just after Thanksgiving, which is the traditional starting gun for the holiday season. I could give you lots of reasons why we have started to do all this sooner this year. Both Kim and I find ourselves having just finished big projects (hers a vocal concert and mine a series of expert witness testimonies), and the…
I’m sure I’ve mentioned how much I like certain magazines. My current favorites are The New Yorker, Sunset and National Geographic. The appeal to me of The New Yorker is less about life in the City and which restaurant to go to next than it is about the broader cultural messages it provides about everything from politics to literature to theater and music, as well as the current cinema and humor. I think of The…
I don’t think the world operates on a web of conspiracies the way some people do. I feel like the exact opposite is the case. I believe people are trying their hardest these days to make sense of everything that’s happening when the truth of the matter is most likely that there is minimal rhyme or reason to most of it. One of my favorite themes revolves around the fact that we live in an…
Every day is a new adventure. The great Chinese curse says “may you live in interesting times“. These times are nothing if not interesting. In 2017, as Donald Trump took the reins of government in his first presidency, we were all unhappy or surprised by many of his choices for senior cabinet positions, Bringing Rex Tillerson in as Secretary of State made us all wonder what was going on. Jeff Sessions as Attorney General was…