Triangulating Friendships Last night Kim and I had drinks and dinner with an unusual kluge of friends. They themselves are not unusual, but the connections are a bit complicated. Tricia worked for me in 1981 in the early days of Bankers Trust. She was fresh out of school and both impressionable and eager to learn about the world. Her husband Sam, who came along years after Tricia and I had parted ways, came to…
Getting Robbed I had a message on my phone last night from a woman I recognized as an old college friend Rob’s ex-wife. I hadn’t spoken to her for years. I called her knowing something meaningful was up. I had spoken to Rob a few months ago and he did not sound at all well. I told a mutual friend that he sounded like he was 90 years old and feeble at that. At…
Breaking Up is Hard to Do Do many of us even remember the days when our telephonic voice choices were AT&T and nothing more? The telephone invention is like most great inventions, the early pioneers working on such a device fade by comparison to Alexander Graham Bell, who patented the device in the U.S. in 1876. History rewards the commercializers of great inventions. Just ask Thomas Alva Edison. Bell fancy-stepped his way into forming…
Suffering Succotash My first recollection when I thought of this title was Snagglepuss, the pink, high-falutin, well-dressed cat who thinks of himself as a great thespian (Thay that with a listhp). But Snagglepuss was the cartoon character who most often said, “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”, with a slight Bronx accent. And who can forget his stage-craft with the phrase I find I use all the time, “Exit, stage left!” But Snagglepuss had no appetite for lima…
Desk Toys There is an advertisement on TV these days for insurance with a guy in his office, which is turned into a ball pit. Who can tell anymore if these ads are for Geico, Progressive, Farmers or whatever? Unless there is a gecko or that androgynous Flo person in the ad, they are all funny and good entertainment to watch, but all they really do is remind us that insurance is a competitive…
The Lost Weekend The 1945 Billy Wilder movie The Lost Weekend stars Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. It is about a four-day bender taken by a chronic alcoholic and it explores the depths of a wounded human soul. I too just had a lost weekend or sorts. I am not a drinker, so alcoholism is not my vice. Back in 1968 at the age of fourteen, I traveled to Italy with my family…
One Small Step for Man The other day at lunch several similarly aged Baby Boomers and I sat at lunch playing “where were you when.” The first trick is to figure out the events of our lives that rose to the occasion. JFK getting shot in 1963 is the baseline and everyone could remember. We all missed on Martin Luther King and The RFK assassinations in 1968. The next one was the moon landing in…
Hiding in the Dark This morning I did my usual few hours of work on my computer in our study, which is an interior room without windows. I work in the bowels of the building where little can disturb my concentration and I stare at the screen or the wall (albeit I am listening to MSNC on the TV in the corner, but that is hardly a distraction any more, more like an oxygen hose…
Pivoting In my business we have decided to try to pivot. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. Life is about flexibility and change. When a business faces a roadblock, especially an insurmountable one, the only sensible thing to do is to alter direction to get around the roadblock. By most standards, that is considered intelligent management. In a hedge fund that is called style-drift and is deadly to investors as it…
The Long and the Short of It We have all heard about the UN report that gives us a dozen years to take corrective action before the climate change battle is irretrievable lost. That report, while falling on seemingly deaf Trumpster ears, has made the EU sit up and get even more serious than they have been about addressing the root causes of things like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Running a business called Low…