Boy Interrupted If you saw the movie Girl Interrupted with Winona Ryder you will understand the concept I am going for here. In that movie, Winona spends eighteen months in a mental institution as she has shown an abject inability to cope with reality. There’s a bit of that starting to go around all over the place right now. I’m not sure its being deemed to be worthy of being committed, but there is certainly…
The Mask of the Old Lone Ranger In 1961 I was seven years old and intended to start second grade in that Fall at the Spring Harbor School in Madison, Wisconsin. We had moved that summer from Turrialba, Cost Rica and I was going to transition from a one-room schoolhouse on the grounds of the Institute where by mother worked and we lived, to a middle-American suburban grade school during what has come to be…
Going to War In 1972 I turned eighteen, which in those days was the age of majority on all fronts. At eighteen you could drive (even at night), you could drink (hopefully not before driving), you could vote (the 26th Amendment passed in 1970), and you could fight for your country without your parents’ permission (the single biggest argument favoring the 26th amendment). We needed young men (young women could also join but could not…
The Darkness Within This is no time for negativism. This is the time for us all to stay positive and optimistic that life will go on, that our species will persevere, and that the kindness of the human soul will prevail. When we saw Saudi Arabia rear up on its hind legs to push the oil production limits up at great expense to the price of their black crude, we were secretly encouraged. We all…
The Life of the Mind Today I had occasion to speak to a friend and colleague I worked with thirteen years ago and and saw probably five years ago. I have given him my blog address so, full disclosure, he may well be reading this just as you are reading this. Why do I mention that, because I am forever getting into hot water with people who share things with me and then find themselves…
Sucking the Marrow It’s late in the afternoon, but not so late that the sun is yet setting. My day starts early out here in San Diego. That is especially so on Tuesdays because Wednesday may be Prince Spaghetti Day (for those of you who grew up in or near Lowell, Mass.), but Tuesday is CEO Management Day. It is the day we get everyone together to update ourselves on what everybody is doing to…
Insuring Insurance A month ago I wrote a story about self-insuring, aimed mostly at the business of buying insurance on travel and discretionary purchases or “toys”. I have a very different topic to consider today and it’s based, as always, on something I’ve recently read about the state of the insurance industry during the Coronavirus crisis. The Wall Street Journal reports that there is increasing pressure on insurers to broaden their policy protection to not…
It’s A Complicated World As I’ve been sending out my magnum opus to my friends, my 444-page coffee-table book about twenty-five years of motorcycle riding, called The Ride is All, it has given me cause to reconnect with a few friends who had fallen by the wayside. I am rewatching (for the umpteenth time) one of my favorite recent vintage movies, Green Book with Vigo Mortensen. As Tony Lip (Vigo) is driving Don Shirley (Mahershala…
The New Gold Rush $2,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of stimulus and thank God for Chuck Schumer or $500,000,000,000 of it would be the private piggy bank of one of the worst businessmen of all time and would undoubtedly go to all the wrong places. As it is, The Democratic senators managed to put in a provision forbidding that any of this loan money for corporations can go to companies owned by Federal employees. Any idea…
The Comeback There is a great deal of discussion these days about the wreckage of the economy in progress with the Lockdowns expanding by the day. The only thing that shows any variance is how long it takes for given state governments to realize that they have no choice but to declare stay-at-home mandates. It’s almost silly how fervently those more concerned about the economy think they can will their way out of a problem…