On Assumptions Questioned and Unquestioned

One of the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read in the past year was from this Substack newsletter by former hedge fund manager Marc Rubinstein, discussing how the most common way to pay for a home in the United States, the 30 year fixed rate pre-payable...

Replant the Trees or the Winds Will Blow

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and...

Reflections on the year that was and is to come

The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.Vaclav Havel It is said that the phrase “may you live in interesting times” is an ancient Chinese...

Christmas at The Hardware: An Advent Shopping Parable

This happened somewhere west of Boston and east of San Francisco, in one of those little towns that dresses up the week before Thanksgiving and stays in holiday finery until mid-January. The local hardware store sat on the corner of the courthouse square, watched over...

Pondering Palimpsests

From the time of the Greeks and Romans up through the Middle Ages, one of the most common materials for writing was parchment (untanned animal skin). Due to the labor intensive process involved in transforming an animal hide into a writing surface, parchment was quite...