I am back in LA now. And I keep thinking back to my time in New York after the bombings…. I was crying so much I could not see, and the other diners joined in, and I thought, What do you do with such atheistic evil?
I think it’s criminal how little people in the military are paid. These are people out risking their lives, taken away from their families for long periods of time. I think they should be paid dramatically more than they’re paid.
I have always been very diversified, so I have never suffered a catastrophic loss. I spread my money around the way a large institutional investor does. I use different brokerage firms. I manage some of my accounts myself.
I’d say the main way people get into terrible financial trouble is just to spend too much money relative to their income, and that is an endemic problem in the United States of America, and that’s the kind of thing that should be taught about in schools.
I do all of the grocery shopping in my little family. I buy cheese, of many different kinds, sliced packaged meats and poultry, bagels, immense quantities of eggs, pre-made fried chicken. Milk. Bacon. It is insane how much dairy, deli and bakery stuff I buy.
My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.
I’ve never liked the idea of just having an office in a college somewhere and teaching classes and going to the library and doing research all day. I’ve never wanted that. The glamorous life is the life that appeals to me.
