Roads Less Traveled

Never in my lifetime have I heard a Presidential Inauguration message so directly address the American people and challenge the political status quo as when Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Continue reading →

Note: my friend Dean Arnold just posted an article about his Dad on Facebook, and it got me to thinking I should honor my own Dad online as well.  So here is the eulogy I said at his funeral some 16 years ago now.  I still miss him.

I recently returned from a Galapagos cruise, and the demographics of the other passengers got me to thinking about who can afford to travel these days and how that might reflect on the current state of political affairs worldwide. The other passengers on the M/Y Grace weren’t what I expected: three families, one of four from Australia, one of four from Miami, and one of five from Norway were aboard, plus a daughter/father team from New Mexico and Texas. Amazingly, two of the families (the Aussies and the Norwegians) had been traveling for months already, making their way through some of the most exotic (and expensive) itineraries on earth, from Antarctica to Iguazu Falls, confirming the fact that this wasn’t just an average group of people, and their professions confirmed it: both of the Norwegians were lawyers and the Aussie was a well-known architect. Rounding out the group was a plastic surgeon and a “silver spoon” real estate tycoon. That this level of travel has always been affordable for the rich I have no doubt, but what is different today is that, by and large, even when I travel in more modest circumstances, I don’t see as many Americans, which seems strange to me, given the fact that we are still supposed to be the richest country on earth.