An Introduction:
Hello, dear reader. Apologies for missing last week, but I did not have much to talk about. Ditto this week, really. Anyhow, it’s finally springtime again. Bless./
Things I’ve Consumed:
Seven Summits:
My father gave me this book a few years ago as a Christmas or birthday gift, and after watching Everest the other day I decided finally to read it. Here is a tale of the triumph of the amateur climbers Dick Bass and Frank Wells—Chief Executives of large corporations both—in climbing the largest peak on each continent—the so-called Seven Summits. Though Wells never reached the top of Everest, Bass did, and thus became the first person to ever climb all seven. Since, it has been done a number of times. This book is about all the things you’d expect: naivety; determination; success; and the friends made along the way. It was a pleasure to read and provided a fun diversion in my evenings.
As a side note, while all this mountaineering is inspiring, I have realized that I have very little interest in climbing a thing like Everest for reasons of both danger and timing. If I ever get into mountaineering, as my father did for a while, I will stick to mountains I can do in a few days at most (as he did). Who has time to spend two months on Everest? Not this yuppie!
Tricky Dick:
This is a documentary about Nixon that I watched on “Max.” I was always a bit in the middle on Nixon, but this made clear that he was really an awful fellow. A lot of people go after Kissinger for alleged war crimes, but these tapes from Nixon’s office demonstrate pretty clearly Kissinger telling the President to back off the civilians while Nixon goes so far as to suggest that we just drop nuclear weapons on Vietnam. Nixon was a small minded man, and is truly one of the most disgraceful Americans of all time.
J.P. Morgan’s Making Sense:
I have in the past couple of months become a big fan of this podcast from J.P. Morgan. This, as well as the parallel episode regarding EMEA LefFin/M&A, is a real highlight:
Some Songs:
An album today.
Some Photos:
