The Irony of Hunter We have all just heard about the conviction of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. This has been a long saga that really began in the middle of Trump’s presidency. Republicans and Democrats alike were screwing around in Ukraine in between the first assault on that sovereign nation in Crimea by Putin’s Russia in 2014 and their more recent and more widespread incursion into the eastern third of Ukraine in 2022. Yes,…
There But For the Grace I’m at the Syracuse airport waiting for my flight to Atlanta, and after a few hours layover, I’ll board my flight back to San Diego. I remember that when my son Roger complained a little bit about me moving as far away as San Diego, I smartly quipped that the difference between a five hour flight to San Diego and a three hour flight to Florida was not so great…
An Extra Day in the Life It’s Monday and I have now been in Ithaca for five days in the warm embrace of cousin Pete and Nancy in their comfortable home on South Hill. It was Nancy, working for Cornell Development in 1997, who met me at an alumni function and said that she was married to my cousin. I got to know Pete and Nancy and hired Pete to manage my house on Warren…
The Wisdom of Sage I joined the Advisory Council of the Johnson Graduate School of Management (JGSM) in 1990. That Council was used to engage successful alumni of the school such that they would become part of the leadership group for the school, both in terms of policy decision-making and, most importantly, in fundraising (both direct and indirect). That invitation to join the Council came as a direct result of my appointment as the Chairman…
You Can’t Go Home Again Thomas Wolfe borrowed the phrase “You Can’t Co Home Again” from another author (with permission) so I will do likewise, but with no ability to get permission from the long-since deceased Thomas Wolfe. In fact, his novel with that name was published posthumously in 1940, so there are all sorts of permissioning issues involved right from the get-go. The story is about a writer who has achieved some degree of…
Ithaca Odyssey Nothing is more central to a classic education than the study of the Classics, and, of course at the center of classical literature is Homer and his epic poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Both are written in 24 books and done in Dactylic Hexameter, which is rhythmic form of writing with a specific cadence, which the Greeks thought of as heroic in nature. The Iliad is all about the Greek conquest…
Getting Hosed When you retire, certain things you have taken for granted for many years suddenly come to the fore and take on a much higher level of importance. I’m sure this varies based on where one lives and what interests you are likely to pursue in retirement. But I think its fair to say that retirement has an aspect to it that involves trying to spend more time with nature and for most people…
Lawyering Up Everywhere I turn there are lawyers. The American Bar Association says that there are over 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. That’s only 0.73% of the working population of the country (I define that as those over 25 but under 75 since that seems like the working age), but it still sounds like a lot. That compares to 2 million engineers, 1.1 million doctors and only 141,000 bankers (I find that number…
The Republic of Humanity When you come into our house, you will see a good deal of interesting art and artifacts from all around the world. I inherited my eclectic taste from my Bohemian mother and every piece has a story attached to it. It is all very bespoke except that you will see a series of mid-sized interesting framed photographs on the walls of our guest suite, kitchen, dining room, living room and elsewhere.…
Who Dat? You may recall that several years ago, soon after we moved to this hilltop on a full time basis, we had a middle-of-the-night encounter with something crawling around on the rood in the living room. We never figured out exactly what it was (I insisted it had to be a bird of some sort, Kim thought it was too heavy and noisy to be a bird), but I installed a Ring camera on…