Why did I stop? Was it the single near-neon-purple lotus bloom poking through the pavers? Did I catch the contrasting brilliant yellow center? Did a flicker of motion catch my eye? That memory has faded. What I remember is standing directly over this flower, bent at the waist, completely entranced, with time suspended, one of […]

It happens to many of us from time to time. Something goes missing, is “misplaced,” and – no matter how hard we look, and in how many places, tracing and retracing our steps, looking under furniture, emptying drawers, thinking and rethinking, “Now where would I have put that to keep it safe?” – it remains […]

The man’s suit was a fine cloth, but the cut was a little dated.  His beard was white, close-cut on the sides, but extended at his chin to square his jaw. His shock of white hair was thinning on top. He sat on the sun drenched park bench, newspaper folded beside him and a blackthorn […]

“I’m sorry. So Sorry. Please accept my apology. I know I was wrong, But I was too blind to see.” (1960 #1 hit by fifteen-year-old Brenda Lee, written by Dub Albrittin and Ronnie Self.) “I am a terrible person!” The clocks changed last night and I awoke at 3:00 a.m. (old time), thinking about all […]

“I’m sorry. So Sorry. Please accept my apology. I know I was wrong, But I was too blind to see.” (1960 #1 hit by fifteen-year-old Brenda Lee, written by Dub Albrittin and Ronnie Self.) “I am a terrible person!” The clocks changed last night and I awoke at 3:00 a.m. (old time), thinking about all […]

I survived a life career in consulting without being murdered by clients or colleagues. That isn’t to say I made no mistakes, nor suffered no injuries, just that I learned quickly enough to recover, if not on that project then on the next. These days, in comfortable retirement, I’m looking back with wonder that clients, […]

“I am the Scourge of God!  If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me among you.” Bellowed Genghis Khan from horseback outside the sacred Mosque of Bukhara, moments before he ordered the wealthy town elders to surrender gold and jewels, razed their homes and slaughtered them, leaving […]

This morning, I saw the slender black cat that slinks around our place driving our near thirteen-year-old black Lab crazy. Pip will rouse from her old dog sleep on the back deck or in the sun by the slider, barking ferociously in what is a very unique bark reserved for this cat alone. “Slinky pissin’ […]

“Can you believe how stupid?” “I know. You’d think they’d see the obvious . . .” I was in a small group of twenty-something consultants complaining about our client. I’m embarrassed to say I was in my fifties, but I was joining in. Suddenly a founding partner of the firm, seventeen years my junior, joined […]

I’ve been thinking about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet recently. Though I trained as an actor, I never played Hamlet. Hamlet is a young prince of Denmark, grieving the loss of his father, and feeling vaguely uneasy about the fact that his mother married his uncle Claudius so soon after his father’s death. “Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The […]