Month

Anecdote: “Guess what I set as my platoon’s motto?” Asked my daughter Liv, 20, eyes electric, home from a month of field training exercises, Chinooks, mortars, leading her team through the wild. I’d never seen her quite so happy, at ease, comfortable, confident. Throughout high school Liv was too eager to take charge, which naturally produced the opposite effect. She had a touch of Hillary Clinton, highly competent,

Hope all goes well… “The guy said he was exhausted, couldn’t go on, so I had him hand me his M240,” said Kara, 20, Minnesota, distance runner, my daughter’s roommate. She and Liv had returned from field training exercises, having led their platoons for weeks. “I’m 64 inches and he was 74, but I needed to make the point, so I slung it over my shoulder and kept up the hill.” He followed. “I came up to another who stopp

Anecdote: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed,” said the Oracle, and I vaguely recalled that prophecy from some course I’d taken years ago. The Oracle had spoken these words in ancient times to Croesus, King of Lydia, who interpreted it as a sign that he should sail across the sea to attack the Persians. The prophecy was correct in a sense, but it was Lydia that was destroyed. And so I sat there

Hope all goes well… “Amazing day Dad,” said Teddy, a touch sarcastic, grimy, exhausted, FaceTime. “4:30am wake up in the woods. Tag football at dawn. They let me blow up a pile of C4 for my birthday. Blasting doors, clearing rooms with my squad. Marched up a few mountains with Ryan Gosling and 40 pounds of blanks in my pack,” he said, on a roll. “Ryan Gosling?” I asked. “That’s my machine gun,” said Teddy, eager to c

Hope all goes well… Dusted off an anecdote from 2013 for Father’s Day, about finding inspiration in the elements, strengthening our creative core (see below). Back next Sunday with full weekend notes. All the very best, E Week-in-Review: Mon: EU parliamentary elections see center right coalition hold but also far right parties perform well / Macron calls for snap elections (6/30 and 7/7) as a result in an effort to s

Anecdote: Zeus and Hera detested their son. Murderous, bloodstained, incarnate curse of mortals, wrote Homer of that child, Ares, the god of war. I looked out across the Aegean from Cape Sounion, the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula. The ruin of the temple of Poseidon, god of the sea, still stands atop the Sounion acropolis. Nearby, the temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom and defensive warfare, is little more

Hope all goes well… The Fates were three daughters of Zeus and Themis, goddess of divine law and order. I was in Greece, wandering. Clotho brings each of us into existence, spinning the threads of our lives. Her sister, Lachesis, measures thread with her rod, determining the length of our lives, our destinies. I have clung to the belief that free will shapes an indeterminate and evolving future, though one can never

Anecdote: “The best career advice I ever got was from Richard Rainwater,” said the investor, a business builder, iconoclast. “He told me to find where capital needs to go and then make sure to become relevant in that space,” he said. “It’s the only advice I’ve been consistently attached to throughout my career. I’ve been dogmatic about it.” We go back 15-years, and he’d never told me this story, although I’d marveled

Hope all goes well… “Still nosebleed long,” grunted Bulldog, selling a few S&P puts for sport. “Bought more stocks, and now I’m buying bonds. Not as a hedge, they’re both going up,” growled Dawg. “The Baby Boomers are still too nervous about this market, Gaza, Russia, China, Iran. They got trillions sitting in money market funds. But at some point, as stocks rally, these Boomers are going to get FOMO.” That’s whe