Nobody Asked Me But, Early-June Edition.

Nobody Asked Me But…is my ever-so-irregular tip-of-the-hipster-fedora to the New York icon and sportswriter, Jimmy Cannon. Famously prolific, when Cannon had nothing to write about, he’d pen a relatively meaningless miscellany. His, better than this. Nonetheless, my stab.

Nobody Asked me but….

…Of course Yiddish is an all-but-dead language, but on Saturday walking in Carl Schurz Park, I heard this Yiddish dialogue (in New York-inflected English): “So it’s finally gotten warm.” “Warm, yes. But so breezy.”

…Most people younger than me will never know the joy and freedom of walking out of the office and being relatively unreachable until the next morning.

…Today, it’s hard to imagine having lunch with someone and not having to check your phone every seven minutes in case there’s an “emergency.”

...There's really never an emergency.

...As the son of a successful father, I've spent 40 years of my life considering the Homeric words of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom as found in the “Odyssey.”

...“Few sons are the equals of their fathers. Most fall short, all too few surpass them.”

...Perhaps, I could add to Homer with a bit of Raymond Chandler, “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” 

I’m not sure you can find a better four-minutes of film
than the opening of David Lean’s 1946 adaptation of Dickens’ “Great Expectations.”

...Just because I'm a nice guy, here's another three minutes from Messrs Lean and Dickens...

 …I read an article in the recent weekend edition of “The Wall Street Journal,” about items Megan Rapinoe, a star of the US Women’s Soccer Team considers ‘essential.’ Those items included a $586 pair of white leather sneakers deceptively called Common Projects.

…$586 for a pair of white leather sneakers is something I will never understand.

…I’ve always been a fan of the writer and economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

…Not the least because he wrote this in 1955. “Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.”

...Maybe we should post that quotation as an inscription on the walls of every conference room.

… You might want to pick up Galbraith’s important book, “The Great Crash of 1929.” I have a feeling it will be as relevant in 2020 as it was in 2008.

…In 2020, after the Trumpublican policy brings down the global economic system, like George W Bush’s policies did in 2008, $586 for a pair of white leather sneakers will be cheap.

…That is when we’ll have to go shopping with wheel-barrows full of dollars.

…Enough optimism for one day. Let’s get back to work.

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