Since the birth of my first son years ago, Father’s Day reigns as one of my favorite holidays. It’s the one day each year when fathers get a little respect, a very little. It’s also a sad day for me. In 1995, my father passed away at age 69, another smoking statistic. Dad always took [...]

Miklos Rozsa led what he called his “double life.” Millions of people who have never attended a concert of classical music heard his music when they watched films such as “The Thief of Baghdad” “The Lost Weekend,” “Ben-Hur”, “El Cid,” and “King of Kings.” The academic world knew him as Dr. Miklos Rozsa, a renowned [...]

Stocks finished April with a slight decline of -0.7% after rallying 2.25% on the last 5 days of the month. Bonds, which are not highly correlated to stocks, returned 0.9%. Developed international equities continued to grapple with debt issues during the month, declining -2.1%. Gold was flat and has underperformed equities year to date, but [...]

The stories behind a lot of the wineries are as interesting as the beauty of the wineries themselves. Driving into the B.R. Cohn winery, the driveway is shaded by many olive trees. At the top of the driveway was a beautiful landscaped and yet simple building that was the tasting room. The real surprise was [...]

After Debussy died, Maurice Ravel became known as France’s greatest living composer. The careers of the two men overlapped and, at a superficial level, their music is often considered quite similar. Some critics at the time, in fact, accused Ravel of copying Debussy’s style – even plagiarizing his music. Ravel vehemently denied these charges. Writers [...]

Before I was old enough to drive, my friends and I had already scouted several fishing holes around our hometown of Slidell, La. We bicycled to these piscatorial pleasure pits between times when our dads could take us “real fishing” and when we should have been studying or in class. Most people call their favorite [...]

Everywhere we look, we see evidence that the federal government under President Obama is out of control. Our country is at a crossroads and the 2012 election is our best chance, maybe our last chance; to turn it around. Here are some recent examples: • Our national budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion every year [...]

In the last chapter, I commented that this wound up the report of my service in the ETO (European Theater of Operations), and I was being transferred to the 97th Division then training at Fort Bragg to be part of the initial assault on the Japanese island of Kyushu scheduled for November, 1945. Before this [...]