My mother spent a lot of time in her youth (after college) skiing just as the sport was beginning, playing tennis on a clay court she and her cousin, Betty (no better Depression era names than Millie & Betty), and playing golf with things called a “mashie”, “spoon” and “niblick”. She was my role model in all things including sports, so those were the sports I aspired to play. During her grad school days in…
I have always been a guy who seeks to integrate various things in my life. What I mean by that is that I seem always to come upon overlaps or areas of common interest in different aspects of my life and rather than treat them as coincidental, I have always enjoyed finding ways to have them connect in more meaningful ways. For one minor example, this past weekend when our friend Chris was visiting, he…
I was just speaking with a friend who out of the blue asked me if I had ever gone through therapy. Needless to say that sort of question makes one sit up and take notice since it is not a question asked in the normal course. Perhaps if there was a broader discussion underway about mental health in general it might be contextually routine, but when it comes out of the blue with a person…
When I was young, one of the things that made absolutely no sense to me was soup. How could anyone feel that a bowl of some flavored liquid, even with a few chunks of meat and a few noodles would be fulfilling? I just didn’t get it and had little or no use for soup. Back in 2002 as I was crossing over into middle age, there were a few years when I got into…
It’s been two weeks since the Trump inauguration and I think its fair to objectively say that its already been a wild ride that seems to be getting wilder by the day. This is proving to be a very confusing moment for many of us and I would like to talk that through. In the past few days I have been contacted by a wider array of old friends and acquaintances than I can ever…
This may be the most important piece I will write in a long time, so please try to stay with me. For over six months now I have been struggling to understand what has happened in this country, specifically what caused the massive shift to the Right which resulted in the election outcome that we are seeing implemented in policies every day now. Perhaps the most startling thing for people like me has been to…
I was never an obsessed comic book reader, but I certainly read my share of DC and Marvel comics as well as the occasional Classics Illustrated, and, truth be told, not an insignificant number of my sister’s Archie & Jughead comics. Superman was still on TV (reruns mostly since it aired from 1952 – 1958), but George Reeves was busy pretending to take off and land from his flying episodes and had little time for…
My kids have outdone themselves this year for my 71st birthday. I always try to make each of their birthday’s special and always have. When my daughter turned 21 in college, I took out a big ad in the campus newspaper, wishing her a happy birthday. This approach seems to have rubbed off on them and every year they get me something for my birthday with varying degrees of effectiveness. Effectiveness defined as getting me…
I’m working through a proposal development process with a young guy who used to be a musician and has now become a podcast marketer. He has a nose ring on one nostril, which I wish he didn’t have, but it doesn’t seem to impact how his brain works. He seems very reasonable and picks up on things quickly even though he is learning about the expert witness business as he goes. You may wonder how…
Small movies sometimes leave big impacts. Such a small movie was the 2002 Hugh Grant / Toni Collette movie, About a Boy. It was written by Nick Hornby, who wrote several other impactful small movies like Wild with Reese Witherspoon, Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan and An Education with Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard. I really appreciate well-written scripts and compelling stories rather than all the big, bold action we tend to see mostly in the…