I’m Jealous. Again.

Ernesto “San” Aviles, Portrait D’un Ami Tenant Une Poire, 
1975, acrylic on canvas, 19”x19” 

In 1989, the first time I tried to retire, I bought a half-interest in a local art gallery. I imagined that I’d be spending my newly freed-up days there, mostly reading great books, but also having stimulating discussions about art with rich and sophisticated collectors who had heard about our superb inventory.

That turned out to be a delusion. The reality of selling art on a retail basis, I discovered, was much more about building lists of prospects, staging promotions to get them in the door, making a good impression, and then constantly hounding them to convert them into paying customers. That was essentially the same routine from which I had just retired. So, I eased myself out of that deal and applied what was left of my interest in art to purchasing it, which turned out to be a lot of fun. If I saw it and liked it, I bought it. It was a simple as that.

I eventually decided to convert my habit of randomly buying art on impulse to the much more disciplined job of building a specialized collection. That wasn’t quite as easy as impulse buying had been, but it was more rewarding in the sense that I was working toward a goal that I truly cared about.

I had fallen in love with Central American Modern Art, so that was to become the core of my collection. But the dream I had for it did not feature me as the lead actor. I was busy trying to grow several businesses that I still had an interest in, and so I had to rely on Suzanne Snider as my partner to do most of the legwork – traveling to Central America to make contacts with dealers, artists, critics, and major collectors; winning their trust and respect; and then having them help us find opportunities for me to invest in the pieces we agreed that I needed to make my collection “world-class.” Which, of course, meant that she was having most of the fun.

To ensure the future of my collection, I came up with the implausible idea of somehow housing it in a museum. Maybe one that I would build myself. The dream I had for that project had me playing a larger role. I would be meeting with and learning from all the cool and interesting people that Suzanne had befriended over the years.

In 2021, I took the first step toward making that happen by having Suzanne help me establish two non-profits: the Mark & Kathryn Ford Collection to hold the core collection, and the Museum of Central American Art (MoCAArt) to make it available to the public.

Meanwhile, Suzanne has been curating the collection as it’s grown. And I’ve been working like a nut job generating income to fund the project; she’s still meeting and learning from all of those cool and interesting people.

Here’s an example. She’s writing about a recent trip she took to El Salvador to attend an exhibition of my favorite Central American modernist: San Aviles.

MoCAArt board member Louis Carrillo and Michel Langlais, 
president of the MARTE museum in El Salvador 

The birds sing, a dog barks and we sit in a covered patio of a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home. Orchids, palms, and giant ferns from prehistoric times blend as a wall. In the center of the yard, a large tree I only know from Dr. Seuss books.

I am hoping to see the Salvadoran National bird, torogoz, a turquoise-headed motmot, relative to the kingfisher. The long, thin tail feathers have plumes on the ends.

I am here with Louis Carrillo, and we are staying in the home of Michel Langlais in San Benito. It is just a block or two from EL MARTE, where the exhibition of Ernesto “San” Aviles opens this week.

Michel, as our personal ambassador, has planned the week. He is incredibly hospitable and just hearing his stories of all the people he knows in the art world is not only entertaining but impressive.

This morning we will visit the museum Forma, and in the afternoon one of my favorite contemporary artists here in El Salvador, Ronald Moran, at his art cooperative, La Fabrica.

3 Days in Sin City with 2 (Seriously) Old Friends

I spent a few days in Las Vegas last week for a many-times-postponed mini get-together with two old (as in aged) friends.

For most of my life, Las Vegas has been known as one of the great gambling capitals of the world. Miles above its poor cousin in Atlantic City, it is now outpacing its more venerable competitors in Monaco and Macau. And although England and France have more total casinos (141 and 189, respectively), no single city comes close to the 122 that Vegas has. Not to mention the total square footage devoted to and money spent on gambling in Vegas as compared to any other city, state, or country in the world.

There is an energy I feel when I’m in The City of Lost Wages that returns every time I’m there. Thinking about it now, it’s hard to say exactly what it is. It’s less refined than the James Bond vibe I enjoyed in Monaco and less claustrophobic than I felt in Macau. It is highly exciting but not frenetic, hopeful but not ebullient, dangerous but not quite frightening. It produces just the number of pheromones and amount of adrenalin that my brain seems to crave.

The Vegas of today is a very different city than it was in 1911, when it was incorporated, or in 1931, the year that gambling was legalized. It’s even different from how it was in 1995, when Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi made Casino, the epic crime movie starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone.

It is a new and improved version of a manufactured city that wears its artificiality like a robe of honor. It’s bigger now. It’s safer. You can bring the kids and have a family vacation without even pulling on the arm of a one-armed bandit.

But if you do wander into its vast, interlocking amusement park of Sin, you may feel as if you’ve entered a beeping, ringing, and blinking dreamland whose décor can only be described in hair-style metaphors: updos, ducktails, megafros, pompadours, and whatever it is that sits on top of our president’s head.

Which is to say: If you open your mind to Las Vegas, it will open its endlessly garish and entertaining experiences to you.

Besides the fun and excitement of bathing in the energy of Las Vegas, my friends and I attended three shows…

The Eagles at The Sphere 
My Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars 

We sat very nearly at the top of a steeply descending bleacher, enclosed in a 377-foot, $2.3 billion globe, a massive, 580,000-square-foot bubble in the heart of the casino district, featuring a “wraparound interior LED screen, speakers with beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies, and 4D special effects.”

Counting floor seating (maxed for this show), the venue provides amphitheater seating for 20,000. Based on our “cheap seat” tickets at $400+ each, that brings in more than $10 million per show.

From our aerie perch, the stage was a small rectangle of light upon which the musicians were tiny black objects barely moving. But the rest of the view – the entire interior scope of the globe – was a blaze of hallucinogenic images emerging, metamorphizing, and disappearing in synchronicity with the brain-pounding sound.

“Gee,” I was thinking, “With a rig like this, you don’t even need an actual band down there to make this work. The sound system is killer. The light show is LSD level. They could replace the Eagles themselves with three-dimensional, AI-programmed holograms and the performance would be just as great.”

Which is true. It was nevertheless a great show and a once-in-my-lifetime experience – one that gave me a glimpse into the near future and a new respect for the genius and virtuosity of the Eagles themselves.

A little circus called Absinthe 
My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars 

The cast of Absinthe 

I had no expectations because I hadn’t booked it and didn’t ask. It was one of those small Cirque du Soleil-styled shows with lots of impressive balancing and gymnastics routines held together by a funny, bawdy script and two very talented lead actors/comedians. From the muscularity and good looks of the performers, I guessed they were Russian. Almost right. They were Ukrainians – from the north.

A disappointing tour of Theatre Arte 
My Rating: 0.5 out of 5 stars 

Billed as a “must see” in Vegas, and described as “the ultimate immersive experience,” I thought – correctly – that this was going to be an experience similar to a fantastic light museum that K and I visited last summer in Tokyo. I was expecting the sort of music and visuals of The Sphere ribboned into a maze of corridors and rooms.

And it was that. Sort of. But Theatre Arte was much smaller and considerably less spectacular. The good news: By the time I realized it was a bit of a scam (after about 12 minutes), it was over.

And about those hookers… 

As you know if you’ve ever been to Vegas, it’s nearly impossible to get from your hotel room to an exit without winding through a jungle of slot machines, blackjack tables, and poker rooms – all designed to keep you from exiting until you’ve laid your money down and lost most of it.

Alcohol is cheap and plentiful. Ladies of the night, too. (Well… plentiful, but probably not cheap.) Although, given the way that so many women dress in the casinos, I found it difficult to know which was which.

My companions, however, found this issue debatable, and spent a good part of the time we were passing through the casinos on the “So, what is she?” question.

Nodding and napping 

As an occasional 11th-hour babysitter for my grandkids, ranging in age from one to nine, I’m acutely aware of how important napping is – both to the nappers and to me.

I don’t need Google to know that in the early weeks infants are almost constantly napping. Before they reach their first birthday, babies take 2-4 naps a day and most preschoolers, even some five- and six-year-olds, still need at least one.

After that, for most children and certainly for most adults, naps are infrequent. I don’t think I took a single nap from the time I was seven to my 70th birthday.

Nowadays, naps are a regular part of my life. There is rarely a day when I don’t take a catnap, usually in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon. In recent months, the one nap hasn’t been feeling like enough. Fifteen minutes at nine or ten o’clock seems about right to keep me going till about two. But then I find myself nodding and looking for some horizontal piece of furniture on which to briefly lay my body down.

You’ve seen the illustration of the chronology of human movement – from fetal position to crawling to toddling to walking upright to walking in a stoop to returning to the fetal position just before death.

Someone should create something similar about napping – from much of the day as an infant to 2-4 times a day as a baby to once a day as a child to zero as a teenager/young adult… and then gradually back up again.

I’m already at one nap a day, bordering on two. And do you know what? I’m secretly looking forward to that next stage.

Used book, big price

Great Leads is a book that John Forde and I wrote in 2011. It was published by AWAI, a business that sells career courses to aspiring professional writers.

Great Leads teaches copywriters how to create successful direct response advertising pieces by deploying six “archetypal” leads – basically, the headline and first several hundred words of copy.

Of the two-dozen business and self-study books and courses I’ve written, I’d rate this among the top six. And it looks like there’s someone else that has the same opinion, as a used copy was recently listed on Amazon for $127.

This sometimes happens with how-to books published by medium- and small-sized publishing companies. Unlike the larger imprints with extensive reach and large advertising budgets (like John Wiley, which published Automatic Wealth and Ready, Fire, Aim), these smaller companies rarely take the risk of printing more than one edition. And although it’s not common, if there continues to be a demand for the out-of-stock book, it can inflate the price above the original list price, sometimes much higher.

That seems to be the case with Great Leads. 

List price on the book is $14.95, and I have a small number of copies in storage that I’ve been offering to my readers for just $10 (including free shipping).

But now I’m wondering if I should talk to the publisher about doing another print run. Or perhaps take back the copyright and sell it myself. Or, if I’m clever, convert it into a course and have someone else sell it for $299.

Hmmm…

Doing business

I spent a fair amount of time last month brainstorming, consulting, coaching, and digitally conversing with colleagues in the investment publishing industry on the always challenging eternal challenges we talk about – product quality, marketing, and copywriting.

At the time, it seemed like these were all different discussions. But thinking about it now, I can see that there was a thread that ran through them. I believe the market for our products and services has been changing gradually but steadily for about 25 years and that we will not be successful in the future if we continue doing all the things that brought us success in the past. In fact, I think we need a radical change in every important aspect of our business: what our products look like, how we write them, how we advertise them, and how we price them.

I’m not sure anyone is going to listen to me. It’s difficult to believe that you should abandon what has been working well for decades. And of course, I could be wrong about all this. But what if I’m right?

Peace Corps reunion at Palm Bath & Tennis Club 

I spent the last day of February at a VIP luncheon at a VIP venue, the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club. There were 18 in attendance, all distinguished looking men, roughly my age, and all former Peace Corp volunteers. The ostensible purpose was to talk about our experiences as volunteers in mostly distant third-world countries. The actual purpose was to raise money to build a Peace Corps Memorial Park in Washington, DC.

I attended because I’d been invited and because I’d heard that the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club was the place to be. It’s across the street from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private residence in Palm Beach. And although it doesn’t have the same panache as his Moorish estate, it has enough to satisfy the likes of me.

As lunch was being served, everyone had an interesting story to tell. Some were funny. Some were touching. Some were amazing. And not surprisingly, virtually all of them involved overdrinking. Such was the age!

We talked then about plans for the memorial, about how much money had been raised so far ($6 million) and how much more was needed to get the project done (another $6 million). We shared insights from our experiences as fund raisers or fund givers, and agreed we would each, in our own way, consider what we could do to advance the cause.

The atmosphere was a bit formal, but the mood was relaxing towards comfortable and even casual. Before the event ended, I was already hoping that we would all meet again one day.

What struck me was how quickly the group’s openness to and trust for one another developed. Here we were, 18 septuagenarian and octogenarian men who had obviously enjoyed successful and rewarding careers, bonded together by a common experience decades earlier. A bond formed, I believe, by all of us having spent two years at such a young age in a foreign place, speaking a foreign language, working within cultures so different from our own. It happens to soldiers at war and to others that have been through difficult times, too. There is something about it that, although we may rarely talk about it to others, or even think about it when we are alone, nonetheless stayed with us and, in some significant way, formed us into the individuals we became.

I came to the luncheon motivated by a minor interest in seeing what the Palm Beach Bath & Tennis Club looked like from inside its walls and left with a good feeling about those two years I’d spent as a Peace Corps volunteer and 17 potential new friends.

ZenHippo at Paradise Palms 

I had a good time at our botanical and sculpture garden last Saturday. We’ve been getting a steadily increasing flow of visitors during the three days we are open each week. But on Saturday, we had an additional group of at least 60 who had come to a promotional event for ZenHippo, a local nonprofit that provides play-based educational classes and activities for toddlers and their parents.

Their programs are well done. I know because I’ve attended a few with H and E. It’s run by two young moms who seem to have done a good job growing the business. Saturday’s event, which was meant to establish a new base for ZenHippo in Delray Beach, was located between what I think of as Paradise Palms’ Kid Town (with a playground and a “scary” little forest) and Adult Town (with a Tiki bar and game center).

Everyone that came seemed to very much enjoy themselves, so I am expecting to be hosting many more ZenHippo events in the future.

290 building update 

We finally finished the expansion and rehab of my Cigar Club, redoing the exercise area and adding a second floor, which contains a largish gallery for public exhibitions of my Central American Art collection and two offices – one for Gio and one for me – with windows! (A first in 30 years.)

Making New Friends at the Cigar Club

On Friday nights, from 5:30 to 9:30, my “Cigar Club” is open to friends and colleagues for drinks, smokes, and conversation. I’m not always there, but Frank is.

Frank is more than just the bartender. He’s the person who greets everyone when they enter, remembers what they like to drink, laughs at their jokes even when they aren’t funny, and counsels them when they are feeling low.

Frank is also the reason that, when I am there, I usually don’t come downstairs to join my guests until an hour or so after they begin arriving. The buzzer first sounds almost always at precisely 5:30, and continues to buzz every five or 10 minutes. I glance at the monitor on my desk to take note of who is visiting, then I get back to whatever it is that I was working on.

Most of those that come early are “regulars,” so I don’t feel any obligation to entertain them. I know they will be happy chatting with Frank while they settle into their favorite barstool or couch or seat with their favorite drink without my intervention.

I spent about 10 years during my college and graduate school days in and out of the bar business. The business knowledge I acquired was invaluable later in my life, but the social education may have been even more useful.

Among the things I learned was that the best results are had when you introduce someone brilliant or fascinating to a group in a way that demands their respect. If you can pull that off (and it depends significantly on the quality of the catalyst), what you will have is a fascinating and even edifying conversation.

I engineered such an event last Friday when BN, a young real estate baron I know, brought in an artist friend of his who was renting BN’s nearby warehouse to serve as his atelier. I had heard about him – that his “name” was rising quickly among the low-echelon art collectors that religiously attend Art Basel every year in Miami.

The regulars that evening happened to be men of roughly his age that I know from the martial arts world – muscled and tattooed, but good souls with open minds. And so I let them know (even though I hadn’t yet made the judgment) that they were in the presence of an artistic genius.

The fact that he, too, was a student of Jiu Jitsu and that he was about their size (over six feet and two hundred pounds) and had two sleeves of tattoos, one of which reached to his left ear, made my job even easier.

After getting the attention of my regulars, I asked him how he had gotten into the art business. His story was exactly right to win the respect and even admiration of his audience. I may have some details wrong, but here’s the basic plot…

He was working as a humble waiter in various restaurants in Delray Beach while improving his Jiu Jitsu skills, when the owner of the dojo he attended mentioned to him that he was planning on commissioning a large mural for one of the walls of the studio. On impulse, he said that he happened to be a mural artist and would do the work for a small fraction of his normal fee. What he didn’t say, he told us, was that his only experience as an artist had been scribbling in a pocket-sized notebook that he carried with him. He secured the job, and to no one’s surprise but his own, his mural pleased not only the owner, but his students. Thus, a career was launched.

I was in awe of his gumption – that he gave himself permission to take on a job for which he was entirely unqualified and continue to accept commissions while he in the early stages of learning his craft. I was equally struck by the fact that he was able to generate art that would be accepted into Art Basel in less than a year.

I told him so, and he invited me to walk over to his atelier and see some of his work. I did and was immediately charmed and impressed by what I saw – the artwork as well as the eclectic mess of a studio he had put together.

I asked him if he’d be willing to do some sort of mural on one of the sides of my building. He said he’d be “honored” to do “something cool” for me and that I could pay for it with future invitations to the Cigar Club for him and a few of his friends. We shook hands on that.

Driving home that night I was thinking how lucky I am – at my age – to be adding 20- and 30-year-old entrepreneurs and artists to my circle of friends.

In this issue, you’ll find chapters from three of the 17 or so books I’m trying to finish. Next time, I hope to be sending you another two or three.

Trying to write and/or revise five or six book chapters a month is a full-time job. I’ve been managing to do it in addition to my business work by staying up until the wee hours, my laptop on my lap, typing away with a cigar in my mouth.

I’m not complaining. Quite the contrary, I’m loving the hours I’m putting into my books and essays. I may be kidding myself, but I feel like I’m doing something useful. And as I’ve said many times, working on something that one values is one of the three lasting pleasures of life. (The other two are learning about something you value and sharing the value you have created.)

In fact, I’m enjoying both my daytime business work and my evening writing work so much that I find myself resenting any other calls on my time – including activities with friends and family members that, were I emotionally healthier, I should be favoring above everything else.

I’m loving my business work because the challenges have been significant and incessant. As I’ve mentioned in past issues, the information industry (my industry) has been tanking in recent years and that has raised the bar in terms of what must be done – i.e., building and rebuilding information products and selling them online.

One of the biggest challenges is AI. Five years ago, when we talked about the jobs AI would eliminate, we talked about truckers and mechanics and assembly line workers. What we never expected was that no jobs would be more threatened than the ones that used to be considered “creative.” I’ve seen the work that AI is doing in terms of writing and selling economic ideas and financial analysis. It’s scary how good it is. It’s not great, but AI is a self-learning system and I’m thinking that what it produces will be as good as the best creative work being done right now in no time flat.

I’ve been resisting using AI for several years, but virtually all the younger writers in our industry are doing it. So I’ve decided to get into it myself. My first attempt will be to use it to help me write a long essay I’ve been meaning to write for almost a year. The title of the essay in my mind is “COVID: I Told You So!” It will be a compilation of everything I’ve written about COVID since 2020 – all the claims I made from the beginning that were considered conspiracy theories by my liberal and leftist friends.

I was right on every count. And I have more than 6,000 pages of documentation to support my case that I’m going to feed into AI. It would take days for me to organize and digest all of that information. With AI, I’ll get the outline I need to write my piece in a matter of seconds. Literally, seconds!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Villa Santana, Rancho Santana 

K and I “Irish exited” Delray Beach Tuesday, the 4th, to spend a sneak-week at our home in Nicaragua. The plan was to lay low and get lots of work done. And/or reading. And K, at least, succeeded.

I was found out. And by day three had my calendar nearly blocked – although at 5:30 every afternoon, our old friend TG, who has been living in Rancho Santana for 11 years now, stops by to make us “tequila sunsets.”

The photo above was the view on Monday, the 10th. (I was excited to be able to get the sunset reflected in the pool.) Two nights before that, we had an even more remarkable view.

It was an hour after sunset, and the sky was a wide, upwards arching blackboard speckled with the chalk dust of stars – some of which TG was naming for us. “In this sky, the brightest is always Venus,” he said. “And that one just above us – it’s pretty bright, too – that one’s Jupiter.”

Suddenly, coming from the southern sky, I saw a line of stars moving in a northwest direction. “What the heck is that?” I asked TG.

“That’s your friend Elon’s project,” TG said. “They call it a ‘Starlink satellite train.’ It happens after SpaceX launches a new batch of its Starlink satellites.”

There were dozens of tiny white orbs moving quickly across the sky above us, appearing out of the black and then disappearing into it as they entered and exited the path of the sunlight.

I’ve seen a dozen comets and even a comet shower, but I’ve never seen anything as exciting as that. I wondered what it would be like to be Musk watching them, knowing that he’d put them up there. It humbled me.

This is what it looked like:

And here’s an animated view.

Another Crazy-Busy Month for Me 

January for me was no less jam-packed with writing deadlines, business meetings, projects, plans, and urgencies – including personal, social, and family events – than December was.

I’m not complaining. These are obligations I freely chose and do enjoy. Apparently, this is how I want to live this stage of my life.

Nevertheless, I am aware, and am often reminded, that I spend 10 to 16 hours each day by myself. I’m also aware that this troubles some friends and family members. Where are my priorities? Don’t I realize that according to actuarial tables I have fewer than 10 years left? Have I considered the fact that I’m acting selfishly? How can I excuse myself?

I can’t excuse myself. I can only explain what I’ve been doing and let those who feel entitled to judge me, judge me.

Looking back at my calendar, I see that I was busy during the whole of the first week with hosting 15 or 20 members of the Ford and Fitzgerald clans who had traveled to Delray Beach to renew connections and enjoy the (relatively) good weather. That and a half-dozen lab and doctor appointments to assess the status of my recoveries from a carotid artery surgery, a complete knee replacement, and, more recently, a bout of super-high blood pressure, along with various other less serious health concerns. All while I was continuing my experiment with losing weight via weekly semaglutide injections.

You didn’t ask, and I see no reason you should care, but I was given good to very good reports on all counts.

I did have several business meetings that were important to me – one involving a merger, one involving a de-acquisition, and two intense but rewarding half-day conversations about restructuring publishing companies whose profits were on a downward slope.

During the next three weeks, unbridled by visiting family, I was able to get 12 new chapters written for nearly as many almost-finished books, including Wealth Culture, The Challenge of Charity, The 7 Natural Laws of Wealth Building, and one on the 25-year history of finding and developing Rancho Santana from a cow farm to a world-class resort. I also had two virtual meetings with my partners and colleagues in Japan. One was about marketing strategies for 2025. Another was a critique of advertising copy written by several of their copywriters, which I very much enjoyed – probably because it felt like my critiques and suggestions were spot-on and could result in bigger monthly ROIs, just as a similar meeting the month before had resulted in, in one case, an 800% higher response rate.

I had several good planning calls with the senior executives running Rancho Santana, FunLimón, and Paradise Palms Botanical & Sculpture Gardens. Those calls are almost always good because the people running them are very good at what they do.

I read four good books and skimmed two not-so-good ones, and I watched six movies nominated for Academy Awards (two of which were very good).

And all the while, I enjoyed writing my weekly blog posts, which I hope you enjoyed reading.

Enough about my busy-ness. Let’s talk about other things. First, about bourbon, and then about the future of the United States over the next four years.
Eat, drink, and be chary… about value! 

At my cigar club across from the tracks, guests eat, drink, and smoke for free. The cost of admission is courtesy, conviviality, and appreciation. Guests of good will understand the implications of those three rules. With one exception: Inexperienced drinkers and smokers might occasionally mistreat the best booze and cigars in stock out of ignorance.

I’m talking about painful and almost unforgivable offenses such as a Ron Zacapa XO rum with Coke or grinding out a half-finished Padron Family Reserve in an ashtray.

After years of unsuccessful efforts to prevent such atrocities from happening, I had to subdue my egalitarian prejudices and create a VIP Room.

Newcomers are welcome to order whatever type of booze they prefer from Frank, the club’s resident bartender. And as you can see, there are plenty of good and reasonably priced brands to choose from.

Likewise, inexperienced cigar smokers can broaden and deepen their appreciation of cigars by selecting from several humidors outside the VIP room containing more than a dozen highly rated sticks that are well priced – i.e., less than $8 per.

Although the VIP room is always unlocked, I’ve found that it has solved the problem of mistaken assaults by simply being there. Guests tend to ask for permission to enter. And when they do, I ask them about their knowledge and preferences. If they are neophytes, I help them choose from the beginner boxes outside the room. If they are experienced smokers, I walk them into the room to help them select a fine (and relatively expensive) cigar that they haven’t yet tasted.

One problem solved. Another arose. How do I decide what brands of what types of alcohol to put outside and inside the VIP room?

In the case of scotches, I have delegated the task to SS, my partner in the art business, who is a connoisseur.

As a long-time tequila drinker, I can make tequila-stocking decisions based on my own experience.

But for rums and bourbons and ryes and the rest, I have to resort to going online and comparing a half-dozen or so “Best” rankings.

I revise all of my selections once a year, and just completed my research on bourbons. In the “Living Rich” section below, you can see the choices I made for 2025.

A new kind of Trump derangement syndrome? Like… is he deranged? 

Trump has been so busy disrupting government as usual that I can’t keep up. And since his “deal” strategy is closer to threatening and bullying than diplomacy, it’s hard to know what he means when he makes public statements about his intentions.

Perhaps the craziest from my perspective is suggesting that the US should take over Gaza and deport 1.5 million Palestinians. Alex Berenson responds:

So what’s really happening here?

There are a few possibilities.

1: Trump is serious. He is tired of hearing about Gaza and wants to make it the world’s problem, and he believes that Israel will be safer if it doesn’t have to deal with Palestinians in Gaza (and possibly the West Bank too).

2: Trump is semi-serious. He wants to light a fire under the Arab world to do something about Gaza, and he thinks this proposal will do so. He views this idea as a negotiating tactic.

3: Trump did it to distract the world from the fact that he’s going to let Israel do whatever it wants in Gaza. By the way, I am fine with letting Israel do what it wants in Gaza. (I know many of you disagree, but I think Israelis have the right to live without fear of mass terror attacks.) But that’s Israel’s problem, not ours.

4: Trump likes attention, and he hadn’t gotten enough Tuesday.

Click here for more.

Another coveted award for Rancho Santana, and… 
Another proud moment for the Rancho Santana team!

Rancho Santana made it to the NYT’s prestigious “52 Places to Go in 2025” list, where it was recommended for, among other things, its ecotourism attractions, including “vast stretches” of preserved woodlands, five beaches, riding stables, and a turtle sanctuary.

You can get a look at Rancho Santana here.

My Mad December 

December was another month of full-speed-ahead, bookended with two trips to Baltimore to meet and work with board members and senior executives of the business that’s been my primary source of income and satisfaction for the last 35 years.

In between were yearly board meetings with two of the family’s nonprofits: FunLimón, a community development center in Nicaragua, and Paradise Palms Botanical & Sculpture Gardens in Delray Beach… two development meetings with the CEO of Rancho Santana… an advisory board meeting with the English Department of a local university… a meeting with SS and Number Three Son to review the status of our collection of Central American art… a yearly review and planning session led by Number Two Son on the family’s business and real estate assets… a very encouraging marketing meeting with the creative team that publishes my books and courses in Japan… a meeting with Palm Beach County about zoning issues for our property in West Delray Beach… a Zoom meeting with a nonprofit that is working to support entrepreneurial ventures for veterans and ex-Peace Corps volunteers… an introductory meeting with RR about working with him on his business mentorship nonprofit… and a happily productive meeting with MC, the agent heading the six-year audit the IRS hit me with last year.

Not to mention the always engaging discussion/argument about a book selected by the Mules, the book club I belong to… the Monday afternoon lecture/discussions on political and economic freedom hosted by a secret cabal of writers, professors, and economists I was recently honored to join… two doctor appointments… three breakfast meetings… and my meager efforts to assist K in her month-long preparation for the last two weeks of the year when our house is happily filled with our kids and their wives and kids and at least a dozen friends and additional family members that drop by to celebrate the holidays.

Mad. And that’s how December has been for K and me and for the Ford/Fitzgerald clan for the 30+ years that we’ve been living in Florida, and I hope it continues until K and I drop dead from exhaustion!

Working with Your Hands, Tipping with Your Heart 

There are people in my circle of family and friends that occasionally accuse me of being overgenerous in how much I pay and/or tip manual laborers. Their attitude seems to be: “What’s wrong with you? Are you feeling guilty about or trying to compensate for something?”

I find these interactions puzzling. These are people who know me as someone who once cut grass, shoveled snow, washed cars, built pools, painted houses, tarred roofs, worked in warehouses, bartended, babysat, and cleaned toilets pretty much non-stop from the age of 12 until I was old enough to draw a paycheck. Don’t they trust my judgment about how I should pay the people that do these sorts of jobs for me now?

Have you noticed that…

* People that have worked as servers are generally better tippers than those that haven’t?

* Managers that have never done manual labor tend to be the most demanding of laborers?

* Kids that never had to shovel snow or mow lawns or babysit grow up to be adults that are stingy when it comes to paying kids to mow their lawns, shovel their driveways, and babysit their kids?

And tell me this…

* On a restaurant bill, what percent do you normally pay?
* Do you base the tip on the entire amount or just on the food?
* Do you tip when you order food from a counter?
* Have you ever stiffed a server? If so, why?
* What was the biggest tip you ever gave and why?

How I Lost My Self-Esteem to ChatGPT 

In response to reader questions, I’ve been making notes for a longish essay on the technology of robotics and AI and how it will impact the job market. My general view is that (A) the effect will be massive, and (B) it will come much faster than nearly everyone expects.

As you’ll see when I publish this piece (soon!), I’m predicting that we’ll see huge changes in the next three to five years. My advice for dealing with it will be my go-to position for all possible future upheavals: “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!”

I should have followed my own advice. Because just before Christmas, I discovered that AI had replaced me in doing a job that wasn’t even on my radar screen. I’m thinking of my role as chief card and letter writer for K.

It happened quite suddenly and unexpectedly. K had mentioned when I left for work that she was counting on me to write the note to our nieces and nephews that would be attached to their Christmas presents.

So that evening, I sat down and began writing while she was dishing out our dinner.

“Oh, you don’t have to bother with that,” she said. “It’s done.”

“What? How could…?”

“I asked ChatBox to write it for me this afternoon.”

“You did? And you were happy with the result?”

She handed it to me. I was, I’m embarrassed to admit, quite good. Perhaps not as good as the best ones I’ve written. But as good as most, and better than a few.

A bittersweet moment, to be sure. Something won in terms of time. Something lost in terms of pride.

Semaglutide Experiment Update

I’m down to 196 pounds – 30 pounds from my peak.

My strength is down, too. Mostly, I think, due to a significant loss in fast-twitch muscle fiber. I’m working on reclaiming some of that by eating more protein (shooting for 100+ grams daily), resistance exercises, and five-minute sprints two or three times a day, trying to get my heart rate to its max. (It was up to 178. Now it’s about 20 beats less.)

My blood pressure is back to very good. It’s been at about 110/70 for the past 30 days. I’ve stopped taking the medication my VIP doctor prescribed. I’m awaiting blood test results to see what other old-man drugs I can trash.

According to the medical literature I’ve dug into the past month (NIH, the Mayo Clinic), the drug poses a small risk of three potentially serious negative side effects – pancreatitis, thyroid tumors, and kidney injury – although “the risk of these complications is considered low and primarily arises in individuals with pre-existing conditions or family history of these issues.”

On the positive side, I found a report on a large (86,000 subjects) study that found that participants taking semaglutide had more than a 50% lower risk of abusing alcohol – a benefit that people taking other weight-loss drugs, such as naltrexone or topiramate, didn’t experience.

I have noticed that since I’ve been on the juice, I rarely drink more than a single glass of wine or beer. That’s a third of what I commonly drank. So that’s good. But my capacity for tequila – which is almost unlimited – remains the same. I presume it’s a matter of viscosity – that wine and beer take up more space in the digestive system. But I’ve not found any research to support that.

Catching Up: A Look Back at November

I like to keep my Journal notes to personal events and inconsequential thoughts that, for whatever reason, stayed intact in my memory banks till the end of the month, on the presumption that if they lasted that long, they might be worth your attention.

However, when I sat down to write this piece, there was one thing on my mind that made it difficult to think about anything else. So, I’m going to start with that.

Not the election. I had and still have plenty of thoughts on that. But by now, you’ve had a chance to get your fill of such thoughts from your favorite news channels and political gurus, so I’ll hold off on putting in my two cents.

What I can’t stop thinking about is something that baffles me because it should be worrying everyone. Yet, it’s been almost entirely absent from the media. Nor have I heard a single word about it from my friends and family members.

The few that are discussing it are bloggers speaking from well outside the mainstream. And even in that territory, those who are speaking with what I believe should be the proper state of alarm are being largely ignored or dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

What am I talking about?

WWIII, obviously!

How the Hell Did We Get into This Mess? 

I don’t see how it’s possible to ignore the dramatic and dangerous escalation of the Ukraine/Russia war in recent weeks. Nor can I understand why no one seems to think that we are at an inflection point where a global war could be just weeks away, and that the war could easily include nuclear weapons.

To give you a sense of how I see it, I’ve constructed the following timeline (abbreviated from various sources) of what I believe are the significant points of escalation.

Please take a look and tell me if you think I’ve missed something:

1991: Ukraine Becomes Independent 
Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine voted for independence. The Ukrainian people overwhelmingly supported becoming a sovereign state. Ukraine became the second-largest country in Europe by land mass, with a sizable population of ethnic Russians.

1994: The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances Is Signed
The memorandum was an agreement between Russia, Ukraine, the US, and the UK in which Ukraine agreed to transfer all its nuclear weapons from the Cold War to Russia in return for the signatories’ agreement to honor Ukraine’s sovereignty.

2008: Russia Fights Ukrainian NATO Membership 
A NATO summit considered extending a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine. Putin objected to the idea – to NATO leaders publicly and to George W. Bush privately. NATO did not offer Ukraine a MAP.

2013/2014: Euromaidan Protests Prompt Sudden Change in Government 
After promising to work toward a relationship with the European Union, President Yanukovych began to orient Ukraine toward Russia. Widespread protests erupted, centering on Maidan Square in Kyiv. At least 130 people, primarily civilians, were killed. Yanukovych fled to Russia and the new leadership committed to orienting Ukraine towards the European Union.

2014: Russia Seizes Crimea, Creating International Outrage 
Russia seized Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula with a predominantly ethnic Russian population. The annexation was condemned by the United Nations and the European Union.

2019: Volodymyr Zelenskyy Elected President of Ukraine 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former comedian, won the presidency of Ukraine in a landslide. His party also won a majority of seats in Parliament. His campaign promises included ending the war with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine and rooting corruption out of the Ukrainian government.

2021: Putin Demands Security Guarantees 
Zelenskyy cracked down on pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, including Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Putin. Putin drastically increased the number of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border and demanded that Ukraine never be admitted to NATO. The Biden administration rejected Putin’s demand.

January 2022: Russia Recognizes Breakaway Ukrainian Regions as Sovereign 
Putin recognized the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which broke away from Ukraine in 2015, as independent and sent Russian troops there to “keep the peace.”

February 2022: Russia Invades Ukraine 
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, beginning with the eastern Ukrainian territory of Donbas. Zelenskyy declared martial law in Ukraine and broke off diplomatic ties with Russia.

September 2022: Ukraine Forces Russian Retreat 
After months of Russian encroachment, Ukrainian forces pushed the Russian military back, reclaiming over 1,000 square miles. In response, Russia attacked Ukrainian infrastructure, leaving many without power and water. And Putin outlined a plan to mobilize an additional 300,000 troops to reclaim the lost territory.

October 2022: Russia Annexes Four Ukrainian Regions 
Following questionable popular referendums in Ukraine, Putin annexed four regions of Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In response, the US and its allies sanctioned more than 1,000 Russian people and companies, on top of the significant financial penalties already imposed on the nation since the invasion.

October 2022: Crimean Bridge Explosion 
Russia’s bridge to Crimea – a peninsula in Ukraine that Russia had occupied since 2014 – was partially disabled following the explosion. Russia retaliated by launching missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, including civilian areas.

December 2022: Zelenskyy Visits the White House 
The Biden administration announced $2 billion in additional military assistance to Ukraine, including the Patriot missile system (which can bring down cruise missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and aircraft) to improve Ukraine’s air defense against Russia. Weeks later, Zelenskyy visited Biden in the White House and addressed a joint session of Congress.

January 2023: Germany and US Gift Tanks to Ukraine 
The US and Germany committed to sending advanced battle tanks to help Ukraine in its defense against Russian forces.

February 2023: Biden Visits Kyiv 
Over Presidents’ Day weekend in the US, Biden flew to Poland and then took a train to Ukraine’s capital city as a show of support. In joint remarks with the Ukrainian president at Mariinsky Palace, Biden announced $500 million in additional military assistance.

February 2024: Additional US Aid for Ukraine Is Uncertain 
A Biden administration bill for more aid to Ukraine stalled in Congress after Republicans aligned with former US President Donald Trump to oppose further military assistance to Ukraine.

April 2024: House Approves New Aid for Ukraine 
The House marginally passed a foreign aid package that included more funding to aid Ukraine.

August 2024: Ukraine Launches Offensive in Russia 
Ukrainian forces launched a surprising incursion into Russia’s Kursk region near the border, the largest foreign attack on Russia since World War II, killing Russian soldiers and civilians, taking control of some Russian territory, and seizing thousands of drones and heavy weaponry.

October 2024: North Korea Joins Russia’s War Effort 
Officials from the US, Ukraine, and South Korea reported that North Korea sent 10,000 of its military personnel into Kursk to assist Russia.

Last Month: 
* President Trump was elected and repeated his promise of bringing a swift end to the conflict when he takes office in January.

* Zelenskyy congratulated Trump on his victory and the Russian ambassador to the UN said that Russia is open to negotiations to end the war if peace talks are initiated by Trump.

* Days later, Biden gave permission to Zelenskyy to start using American-supplied ATCAMS missiles capable of carrying different types of weapons, including cluster bombs. (These missiles are not only made in the US, but also require US personnel to launch them.)

* The Kremlin warned that the decision will add fuel to the fire and countered by sending an ICBM capable of carrying a nuclear warhead into Ukraine.

* Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that “the military industrial complex seems to want to make sure they get World War III going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives.”

* NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Rob Bauer said, and later denied, that NATO leadership was contemplating preemptive strikes on Russian territory.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded, saying that Bauer’s comments represented an imminent threat to Russia.

* France’s Le Monde reported that NATO was discussing sending Western troops and private defense companies to Ukraine.

* The NYT reported that the Biden administration had discussed the possibility of arming Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

* Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that Moscow “will consider any threat of nuclear arms being supplied to Ukraine by the US as preparation for a direct war with Russia.”

* The next day, he said that under article 19 of Russia’s new Fundamentals of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence, such actions would justify Russia’s defending itself with nuclear weapons.

* Russian state media sources began publishing specs for the Oreshnik missile, claiming it flies at Mach 10+ and can reach 3,400+ miles in distance, which means all of Europe is within its reach, as well as many overseas US missile bases. For example: the US airbase in Kuwait (2,100 km, 11 minutes), the US airbase in Alaska (2,400 km, 12 minutes), Minuteman III missile silos in Montana (4,700 km, 23 minutes).

In this video, Jeffrey Sachs explains how the US and NATO provoked the war in Ukraine.

I don’t know how you see this, but to me it seems like the most serious military situation the US has been in since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And yet, like I said up top, nobody seems to be worried about it. What am I missing?

And now back to the mundanities of my quotidian life…

The Brilliantly Promoted Flop 

Like more than a million others, I spent the first half of last month looking forward to the Netflix special in which influencer and amateur boxer Jake Paul was going to stand in the ring with Mike Tyson.

Prior to the Nov. 15 event, Netflix put up a pre-fight “documentary” series (produced by Netflix and Jake Paul’s PR company) that provided clips of the two men working out – training, sparring, hitting the heavy bag – and speaking confidently about their expectations of winning.

In the training clips, Jake Paul looks like an amateur, whereas Tyson looks like the old ferocious and deadly Iron Mike.

After watching two episodes of the series, I had convinced myself that Tyson had a good chance of knocking Paul out. “All he needs to do is to step inside Paul’s range,” I thought, “like he always did when he fought taller opponents, and then unleash his powerful punches.”

And when the fight began, that looked to be Tyson’s game plan.

But there was a problem – one that could not have been figured out by watching the series. And that was Tyson’s legs. He didn’t have them.

As a result, Tyson was never able to get and stay close enough to Paul to deliver those lightning-quick and bone-crushing punches he’d been delivering so ferociously in training.

In the first round, he never got close enough to Paul to do his thing. By the end of the second round, it was apparent he wasn’t going to.

The bottom line was a highly effective but also highly misleading marketing campaign that resulted in a hugely disappointing boxing match.

I felt like a sucker for being persuaded that it would be a great match and for wasting my time watching it. At the same time, I could not stop myself from admiring Paul’s marketing. It was brilliant and the numbers it produced were insane:

* AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX, which “hosted” the fight, has a capacity of 80,000 people.

* VIP packages with ringside seats ranged from $5,000 to $25,000.

* 120 million viewers watched the Netflix live stream.

* Tyson took home around $20 million.

* Jake Paul took home around $40 million.

Thanksgiving in Nicaragua 

K and I spent the last two weeks of November with my sister and our three boys and their families at our home in Rancho Santana, Nicaragua.

As is the tradition at the resort, Thanksgiving Day began with a “Turkey Trot” at 7:00 a.m., which only the grandchildren participated in this year. That was followed, as always, by Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade on TV, which we watched at the bar in the main clubhouse. After that, we watched the 2024 National Dog Show, and at 5:00 p.m. enjoyed a turkey dinner at Finca y Mar, the resort’s main restaurant.

I’m happy to say that a rising number of travelers are discovering this Central American country’s year-round surfing, quaint villages, and new hotels. Read all about it in this National Geographic article.

Update on My Weight-Loss Experiment with Semaglutide 

As I’m writing this, I’ve lost 25 pounds from my starting weight of 224, and, at 199, I am within three pounds of the target I set for myself three months ago. I’m back to fitting easily into the clothes I had to put aside two years ago because I couldn’t wear them without looking like a wrapped sausage.

The weight loss – in terms of the rate of loss – was virtually identical to what it was the last time I got my weight below 200. There were, however, two big differences. On the positive side, it was much easier this time because I didn’t have to restrain myself from the desire to eat. I simply didn’t have the desire. On the negative side, I feel like a greater percentage of the weight I lost was muscle weight, and my strength and stamina are less than they were after the first drop.

I’m hoping to obviate those disappointments by hard training and eating more protein. I’ll let you know if I do that.

I’m hardly alone in the success I’ve had. The use of semaglutide has increased exponentially in the past year. It was the top-selling drug in the US in 2023, with net sales of $13.8 billion. And that is only the beginning. A recent Harvard study published in JAMA Cardiology concluded that approximately 137 million adults, half the of the US population, could be eligible for the once weekly GLP-1 RA drugs. Click here.

‘Tis the Season… 

The Best Christmas Movie of All Time – Scientifically Speaking 

Earlier this month, Far Out Magazine published a study that judged 20 Christmastime classics by four criteria: Christmas References, Critical Acclaim, Financial Performance, and Festive Buzz.

Having racked up over a million mentions in social media, more than 5 million Google searches, and almost half a billion dollars in ticket sales, one totally silly and superficial movie stood out as the indisputable winner. Click here.

The 10 Worst Christmas Movies of All Time 

Ever since the movie industry began, filmmakers have been giving in to the temptation of making a popular Christmas movie. Some have succeeded but many have failed. Far Out Magazine took a look at more than 100 of the weakest ones and selected 10 that they say are “about as unforgivable as it gets.” Click here.

News and Views 

Just the Facts: The Hunter Biden Pardon 

At least three times since Hunter Biden was arrested for federal gun charges, President Biden told reporters that if Hunter were convicted, he would not pardon him. He said so once in response to a question put to him by ABC News anchor David Muir, again after Hunter was convicted, and again at the G-7 Summit in Italy.

In October, Trump said that Biden would probably pardon him. And on Dec. 1, as I was putting this issue to bed, Biden did just that.

As recently as Nov. 7, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Biden’s position had not changed. “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is ‘no,’” she said.

Then on Sunday night, Biden did exactly what Trump predicted he would do and pardoned Hunter.

Here are impressions from Politico, the Wall Street Journal, Axios, and Fox News.

If the pardon were of Hunter’s convictions of the federal gun charges, this wouldn’t be an issue.

But the pardon was much broader than that, dating back from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. The reason for that is simple: Biden wanted to protect not just his son, but himself from being charged with crimes for running an influence peddling scam that brought the Biden family — through Hunter Biden — tens of millions of dollars from Russia, Ukraine and China while Biden was vice president to Barack Obama.

Ben Shapiro, who understands this story better than anyone I’ve read so far, explains all this very concisely here.

Argentina Posts First Financial Surplus in Decades 

After bringing inflation down from 25.5% in Dec. 2023 to just 2.7% 11 months later, Argentina’s new Prime Minister, Javier Milei, announced that the country had accumulated a budget surplus of AR$523.4 billion (about $500 million in US dollars). “It’s all part of the whacky libertarian’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach to deficit spending,” Joel Bowman writes in Notes from the End of the World, “which, to the ill-concealed shock of squirming Keynesians the world over, appears to be working. Click here.

Malcolm X Lawsuit: Revenge of the Daughters 

Malcolm X’s three daughters filed a $100 million federal lawsuit on Nov. 15 against the CIA, FBI, and the New York Police Department, alleging these agencies were complicit in the 1965 assassination of the civil rights leader. Malcolm X rose to prominence as a lead figure in the Nation of Islam. He was shot to death almost one year after a bitter high-profile split with them. Click here.

Trudeau’s $9 Million Bet on Edible Crickets 

Just two years after the Trudeau government put up nearly $9 million to help build the world’s largest edible cricket factory, the facility is dramatically cutting staff and production in what they say is an extended retooling. Aspire Food Group, which cut the ribbon last year on a 150,000-square-foot factory, has laid off two-thirds of its workforce and significantly cut back shifts, saying they need to make “some improvements to their manufacturing system.” Click here.

Let’s Hear It for the Taliban! 

The Taliban in Iraq had a good November. First, they pushed an amendment to their marriage laws that would make it legal for nine-year-old girls to get married. Then, in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of humanity, they were invited by the UN to attend its climate conference, COP29. And finally, Columbia University undergraduates gathered on a school lawn on Veterans Day to honor the memory of their favorite war veteran, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Click here and here and here.

Yesterday’s News: The Pogrom in Amsterdam” 

No, it wasn’t – as the NYT and the AP wanted you to believe – a fight between football fans.

It was a pogrom. And a predictable one. I’m writing this the day after it occurred. By the time this issue is published, I’m confident that for the mainstream media in the US, Australia, Canada, and Western Europe, it will be a 24-hour story and forgotten.

But to Jews that live in Amsterdam, it’s another chapter of an ongoing and escalating antisemitic assault on the Jewish community there by gang members populated by the 700,000 Islamic North Africans that the Netherlands welcomed into their country from 1997 to 2020.  Click here.

The Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory That Wasn’t 

Remember the violent protests that took place in England in July and August after a man stabbed to death three young girls attending a dance workshop in the seaside town of Southport?

According to social media posts at the time, the killer was a Muslim immigrant. But that was fake news, the government and the BBC reported, racist propaganda promoted by “far right thugs” who wanted to blame and target Muslims “because of the color of their skin.”

Several months later, it’s been revealed that those social media posts were true.

UK police now say that Axel Radakubana, the man now accused of the mass murder, was indeed a Muslim migrant. Radakubana, 17 at the time, was arrested at the scene of the stabbings. Shortly after the arrest, police searched his house and found an al-Qaeda training manual titled Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants and quantities of ricin, a deadly biological toxin. Click here.

Catching Up: A Look Back at October 

Several readers wrote to say that they aren’t thrilled about my changing this blog to once a month. They were accustomed to hearing from me at least once a week, and they wondered if something terrible might have happened to me during October.

Well, not much of consequence happened to me. I wasn’t ill. I won no awards. I did have some fun and some happy surprises, though. Below, a short summary of the highlights.

A Surprise Gift from Montgomery Botanical Gardens 
And an Exciting Addition to Paradise Palms 

I was invited for a private tour of Montgomery Gardens, the sister of Fairchild Gardens, one of the largest botanical gardens in the States, to see their shade houses and grow beds and compare notes about managing palm trees. The tour ended with a small collection of a species of palm tree that had been thought to be extinct. For a palm tree grower like me, this was exciting. To make things better, they donated one to Paradise Palms. Since we opened Paradise Palms, we’ve proudly explained to visitors that we have on display all 11 of the species of palms that are native to Florida. Now we have another one – and another story to tell!

We Might Have Continued This Argument Forever… 
How K and I Stopped Arguing About Plastic Water Bottles.

When I drink water, I prefer to drink it from a plastic bottle, nicely chilled. So, that’s what I do. Whenever I want to drink water at home, I take one of the dozens of plastic bottles that K stores in our refrigerators.

But there’s a problem: K objects to it.

She says I’m wasting money. That I should drink tap water. I tell her I like my water cold. And besides, what are the chilled bottles of water in our refrigerators there for anyway?

She says they are there for our guests. And if I like my water cold, I should put some ice in my glass of tap water.

I tell her that I don’t like to drink water that way. That I don’t like the ice cubes clicking against my teeth.

She tells me I’m being ridiculous. I tell her I paid for the damn plastic water bottles. She shakes her head despairingly and goes about her business.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember. Probably since plastic water bottles were invented. We are both stubborn in the way only the Irish can be stubborn. She has never persuaded me of her opinion, nor have I persuaded her of mine.

Which is to say that this little disagreement probably would have continued until one of us kicked the bucket. But the other day, a light bulb illuminated just above my head.

I realized that I could have my cake and let K eat it simply by refilling the plastic bottle I had just finished drinking from with tap water. I put the top back on and put it back in the fridge. The next time I wanted a drink of water, I used that bottle. And that’s what I plan to do from now on.

Problem solved. And so simply, too.

So, now I’m wondering…

* Why did it take me so long to figure out this simple solution?

* How many such ongoing quotidian conflicts do I have that might be solved as easily?

The Fine Art Market Is Hot. Maybe Too Hot? 

One of Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn” silkscreens sold at Christie’s for an astonishing $195 million.

This blows away all previous prices paid for a work by any American artist at auction. In fact, it was the most expensive work of art sold at auction in history. And the bidding was completed in less than four minutes!

It eclipsed the previous high price for a Basquiat skull painting at Sotheby’s in 2017, as well as Warhol’s auction high for a car-crash painting that sold for $105.4 million in 2013.

According to several experts, this could be the beginning of a spurt of super-sized sales for super-popular artists created by a huge pent-up demand by new buyers that were reluctant to enter the market during and for a year after the economic uncertainty of the COVID lockdown.

I wonder who these new buyers are. Are they the same nouveau riche Wall Street traders and brokers that have been buying up this genre of art? I doubt it. Most of those guys had net worths in the $100 million to $800 million range. But $170 million is even too rich for someone worth a billion. I’m guessing this was Arab money. Maybe we’ll see “Blue Marilyn” hanging in the Louvre’s adjunct museum in Abu Dhabi.

Your Devoted Guinea Pig Is Getting Smaller 

I’ve said that I was contemplating taking a course of semaglutide, the wonder drug originally approved by the FDA in 2017 to combat type 2 diabetes (the kind you develop as an adult). It is fast becoming the weight-loss miracle the world has been clamoring for. Sales in the US are already $28 billion and growing.

The drug is manufactured and distributed under three labels: Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. If you can get a doctor to diagnose you as “pre-diabetic,” your prescription will be (mostly) covered by your health insurance.

I’m taking Wegovy, which is prescribed for weight loss. Before deciding to take it, I did some research. It works in two ways: It sends a signal to your brain that you are “full” way before your brain would have figured it out itself, and it slows down your digestion so that you feel full for a large part of the day.

The efficacy, they say, is high. And that’s been my experience.

I am now in my seventh week of injecting semaglutide into my thigh and I’ve already lost 16 pounds. I weighed 224 when I began the program, and I woke up today weighing 208.

As for side effects, I’ve had none of the stomach or intestinal problems that some have taking this drug.

I am eating whatever I want, whenever I want, and as much as I want. The difference is that my appetite (for food – not so much for tequila!) has been greatly reduced. I used to consume about 2,000 calories a day (trying to watch my calorie intake). Now, I’m consuming about half that. Half is 30,000 fewer calories per month, which amounts to a loss of about 10 pounds, or 2.5 pounds per week. Based on the research I’ve done on dieting, that’s a healthy and sustainable rate of weight loss.

Meanwhile, I’m exercising diligently to reduce the percentage of muscle I’m losing. By next month, I should be down to my target weight (198) – and if you are lucky, I might include a photo in December’s issue of my 74-year-old body in a bathing suit!