Atlanta, GA May 23, 2020 This week I endured a doctor visit and enjoyed a graduation ceremony in ways I never had before. They were the same morning, so I had to rush from one to the other. I arrived at the parking lot at 8:30 for my 8:45 physical…and waited in the car. Within […]
Atlanta, GAMay 18, 2020 Today would have been my grandmother’s 109th birthday. It also is a wedding anniversary for her youngest grandson. Much as I love and admire that couple, I confess I would not ordinarily remember that. I did so only because, over the weekend – from a basement box and with almost eerie […]
Atlanta, GAMay 15, 2020 Georgia was freed from house arrest several weeks ago. But school is basically done, and our companies have retained work-from-home policies for at least a couple more months. Of course, one of us works for a company based in Ohio, where terms of surrender have been more unconditional. But here, residents […]
The following was submitted to the Georgia Tech Journal of Economics in 1997. by John D. Breen Georgia Institute of Technology October 15, 1997 The history of Argentina is one of Indian settlement, colonial exploration, republic, military dictatorship, and, more recently, incipient capitalism. Regrettably, it is also one of varying degrees of poverty, a condition […]
Atlanta, GA May 9, 2020 “Happy Friday!”, came the contrived cheer to start another all-day conga line of Zoom meetings. “I’ll take your word for it that it’s Friday”, I replied. Like an extended vacation…but staying home to work rather than traveling for fun…weekdays now run together, each indistinguishable from the last. Weekends provide some […]
Being confined to quarters, quarantennui is rampant, so I am running out of things to write about. But anyone reading this has thought that for years. Today, we retreat twelve years, and continue to empty the archives. Walla Walla, WA August 4, 2008 Tho’ we never lived in the same state, and they spent their […]
Atlanta, GA May 6, 2020 A continuation of a debate between a couple sanctimonious graduate students, published in the Fall of 1996. Part I can be found here. An Election Year Debate: Josh Engel vs. John Breen Originally Published in the University of San Francisco Business Journal (November 1996) Josh Engel Rebuttal I would like […]
Atlanta, GA May 6, 2020 To take our minds from our pandemic…and to remind ourselves things could be worse…today we will discuss politics. Like a CIA Director hoarding classified documents, I consider some parts of my past best left sealed. But as with records related to atomic testing, overthrows of Iranian governments, or assassinations of […]
Atlanta, GA May 2, 2020 My wife is marvelous in many ways. She is beautiful, intelligent, benevolent…and diplomatic. She can lift her husband’s ego, while keeping his feet on the ground. Earlier this week, she did both at the same time. “You should start a blog,” she told him, as his chest expanded and his […]
Atlanta, GA April 25, 2020 The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H.L. Mencken “Are you insane?” Uh oh… “What?”, I winced, looking up from my book. “Did you really […]