Tremezzo, Italy

October 7, 2026

[NB: Previous installments in this series are here, here, and here]

During the Alpide orogeny of the Cenozoic Era, Africa and Europe collided along the Periadriatic Seam, lifting the Southern Alps from the Lombardy Basin.

Mesozoic rifting, grinding ice, and glacial retreat gouged a steep basin, and left Lake Como as an aquatic wishbone in the Italian Alps. Meltwater filled the trough after the last Ice Age a hundred centuries ago, confined by moraines left by receding glaciers.

Excavation was extensive, creating a lake more than 1,200 feet deep, with a floor about 600 feet below the surface of the sea. Lovely villages, secluded bays, stately villas, and exotic gardens grace the banks of this exquisite pond.

For centuries the Milanese, Austrians, Spanish, and French laid claim to Lake Como. In 1861, it became part of consolidated Italy.

At the end of the Second World War, Milanese fled here to escape Allied bombings. Italian manufacturers moved offices to the Grand Hotel Tremezzo, and the Villa Carlotta sheltered works of art from the Brera Academy.

The war reached Lake Como in April 1945, when Mussolini and his mistress were captured at Dongo trying to flee to Switzerland. They were put against a wall at Villa Belmonte, about a mile from where I’m writing this. Their bodies were subsequently hauled to Milan to be hung by their heels.

The day Mussolini was killed, sixteen people were buried beneath the rubble when the Hotel Bazzoni was destroyed by bombs. The last three nights, this is where we’ve stayed.

It doesn’t look like there’s been much renovation since the air raid ended. The “decor” is dated, the perks (such luxuries as towels, shampoo, soap, hot water, cool air) are limited or nonexistent, and the service is spotty. Overnight traffic and trash trucks sound as if bombers are still making runs.

Our accommodations were arranged by someone else, and ended up being a bit more “budget” than we’d bargained for. But the staff are nice, the coffee is excellent, and the scenery is astounding.

Room With a View

The ride from Milan was relatively quick. Within an hour we’d reached the lake, then followed the narrow (and occasionally harrowing) road that clung to the coast till it reached the hotel.

Tremezzo is billed as “one of the most beautiful villages of Italy.” I can believe it, if only for the spectacular views.

This setting is stunning. North from our balcony Lake Como reaches its greatest width. Verdant escarpments shoot from each side of its three legs. Small boats flit like whirligigs across the water, riding the wake of commercial ferries that connect strands of hamlets that hug the shore.

The warm lake nourishes thick foliage and colorful gardens that feature a thousand species of various plants. Medieval towers and church spires poke above pastel towns and ochre villas. Sunlight glistens on gentle waves as the Grigne encases the sublime scene.

We’re not sure we’ve seen anything more beautiful, and can only imagine the magnificence when these peaks are coated in winter white. After spending time being hypnotized by the view, we decided to become a part of it.

Occupying the promontory created where the ice split to form Como’s fork, Bellagio earns its moniker as the “place between two lakes.” Perched on the prow of its peninsula, Bellagio is beautiful.

Quaint cafes line narrow cobblestone streets ascending steep hills overlooking the lake. Gorgeous as it is, it’s the most “touristy” of the places we’ve seen. It almost feels contrived, like Disney invented an Italian village.

Businesses primarily sell high-end leather, jewelry, and gelato. Most locals cater to guests, whose phones are perpetually hoisted in the air. You’d never catch me being so tacky or gauche.

Incidentally, here’s the inside of Bellagio’s San Giacomo Basilica, during a wedding we crashed:

Tremezzo sits at the mouth of the western arm opposite Bellagio. On its northern edge is Villa Carlotta, perched atop a terraced garden overlooking the lake.

The current edifice was erected in 1690, but later passed to German owners (including the family of the princess for whom it’s now named) until World War I. When Italy entered on the side of the Entente, it confiscated the villa as property of the state.

Housing a museum featuring paintings by Appiani, Migliara, and Hayez, with sculptures by Canova, Thorvaldsen, and Acquisti, the villa is a Baroque building with a neoclassical blend. It’s surrounded by a twenty acre botanical garden that’s the most robust of its kind along the lake, featuring 800 specimens imported from as far as South America and East Asia.

Farther north, across from Varenna, is the hamlet of Menaggio, where I think we may be moving. My wife has rarely been so captivated by a place.

I can’t blame her. The promenade offers enchanting vistas in every direction. Pleasant piazzas, cobblestone streets, and al fresco cafes complete the postcard.

We selected a table for two beside the lake, over a long lunch we never wanted to end. When it did, we made our way back to Tremezzo.

A Nice Reminder

I’d arranged a private boat tour around the lake. Our captain contacted me the day before and asked if we could delay departure by one hour. I was concerned we might not finish before dark, but trusted his judgment as someone who’d done this before.

We agreed to meet at a dock outside the Bazzoni. At the appointed hour, our skipper wasn’t there. He sent a text that he was at the Grand Tremezzo. We took a ten minute walk to the new location… where he also wasn’t.

After searching several docks we finally found the small boat bobbing in the water, albeit a bit annoyed at receiving vague directions rather than specific locations.

For Americans who prize precision and punctuality, this is the frustration and pleasure of Italian life. Or, rather, of life. It’s great to be easy going, unless you value detail or need something done.

With a shock of disheveled hair and a cigarette dangling from his lips, a man waved at us from the boat as he took a swig from a flask.

“Oh great,” my wife exclaimed. “He’s drinking.”

“It’s water,” I assured her as a way of reassuring myself. “But if you want to bail on this we can.” Unwilling to let me off the hook, she said nothing. We kept going.

“Are you Matteo?” I asked, assuming this was the same person with whom I made the reservation.

“I am Giorgio,” he said in his thick Italian accent.

Uh oh.

“You are John and Margarita?”

OK. He knew us, so that was encouraging. We decided to hop aboard.

I suppose we could’ve ended up like Fredo at the end of the second Godfather. But to some extent, we take that chance anytime we do anything.

Instead, Giorgio was terrific. With his knowledge, wit, and humor, he won us over immediately. The bottle of Prosecco didn’t hurt.

Like his passengers, Giorgio had been an engineer. After thirty years, he gave it up because he was unhappy with what he was doing, and realized time was something he couldn’t buy.

He now spends his summers carrying people like us around Lake Como and winters sailing others among Caribbean islands. To commute between his two “offices” he once sailed solo across the Atlantic.

From the dock we sped down the west arm of the lake, past the Villa del Balbianello where Star Wars was filmed, to the Villa la Cassinella Richard Branson bought, and around Isola Comacina —the only island in Lake Como—dotted with Roman ruins and (according to Giorgio) imported kangaroos.

The story is true, but Giorgio got the wrong island. The Australian critters were placed on Isola dei Cipressi in nearby Lake Pusiano.

This is where we opened the Prosecco. Returning toward Bellagio, we eased under the Villa Lucertola, tucked at the base of a steep slope at the edge of the lake and now owned by the Guinness family.

Legend (perhaps invented by captains giving boat tours) has it that a previous owner sympathized with the Nazis. At the end of the war, she tossed her diamond ring in the lake rather than yield it to her captors.

There’s a similar tale that replaces the Nazi sympathizer with a Brazilian woman distraught at having to sell the place. Regardless the tale, the place has since become popular with divers futilely seeking a fabled gem.

Next door is the Ponte del Diavolo, the “Devil’s Bridge” of lake lore. Built over a canyon near Lezzeno, the arched span was apparently completed in a deal with the devil.

He agreed to finish it overnight in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it. The builder and a local priest tricked the devil by sending a dog. Defeated and furious, the devil hurled himself into the river below.

As dusk descended, we approached Bellagio, passed the fork in the lake, and drifted past the lovely village of Varenna. Under enveloping darkness, Giorgio brought us back to Tremezzo, and said goodbye. But not before we exchanged numbers so we can stay in touch.

It was a pleasant surprise and a nice reminder. Sometimes no matter how apprehensive we may be, we simply need to get in the boat.

JD

Milan, Italy

October 4, 2026

[NB: Previous installments in this series are here and here]

We started our Sunday with a sunrise stroll, Mass at the Duomo, breakfast overlooking the cathedral, and reflections on something I didn’t reference in yesterday’s missive.

Under Francesco Sforza, Dominican friars began building Santa Maria delle Grazie to honor the Virgin Mary, and to be the site of the Sforza mausoleum.

Lodovico Sforza later commissioned Bramante to add the apse, a cupola, and cloister porticos that fell victim to the Second World War. These overlaid Renaissance influence on Lombard Gothic.

In the refectory the Dominican friars took their meals. On the far wall of this rectangular room, Leonardo da Vinci left the culminating work of the 15th century. It’s one of the two most famous paintings in the world. The other is also his — the Mona Lisa that hangs in the Louvre.

Hundreds of artists have painted Last Suppers. But only one created The Last Supper. Whenever that image is referenced, it’s Leonardo’s version that comes to mind.

Yesterday we had an opportunity to see it. Entry is allotted to small groups in fifteen minute increments. Like entering a gun range, we passed thru one door that had to be closed before the next could open.

We waited in this holding pen till previous visitors left the refectory. When they did, we entered the hall, and looked to our right.

Testing the patience of his patron and the prior, da Vinci took his time completing the painting we’d come to see. Leonardo apparently explained that conception is more important than execution. “Men of genius”, as Vasari said, “do most when they work least.”

Around Milan Leonardo found models for the Apostles, each remarkably individualized in the painting. But his main challenges were depicting Christ’s features and Judas’s face.

Legend has it he picked the convent’s prior as Judas, but that may be a myth. Struggling to portray Jesus, Leonardo seems to have taken the advice of a friend to leave His visage unfinished.

So sublime were the faces of James the Greater and James the Less, his friend observed, that whatever Christ da Vinci completed couldn’t be their Master.

Leonardo made a preliminary sketch of Jesus’s head, which we saw the day before in the Brera Museum. It conveys resignation of One who knows His fate, and Who must share it with those He loves. At that moment, even Christ was unable to look His apostles in the eye.

Unfortunately, The Last Supper started dying the moment it was born. Leonardo shunned fresco because wet plaster required his work to be rushed.

He instead combined tempera and oil on dry plaster, hoping the layers of oil would supply the sealing qualities of wet plaster, and that these two sets of pigments would allow him to paint at his preferred pace while retaining his work’s resilience on the wall.

It didn’t work.

The tempera he preferred resisted adherence and was prone to flake. On a dry wall between a damp refectory and a hot kitchen, that happened almost immediately. Inconceivably, friars later accelerated decay by cutting a doorway thru Christ’s feet.

We’re lucky that any of The Last Supper still survives. Restoration has persisted over the centuries (often doing more harm than good), and ongoing preservation requires small crowds and short visits.

Unsurprisingly, French Revolutionaries took a whack at it. When they invaded Milan in 1796, they used the refectory as an armory. To defile a work of Catholic art, the soldiers threw rocks at the wall, or climbed it to scratch the eyes from apostles’ faces.

A couple decades later, efforts were made to move the mural to a safer environment. But central chunks collapsed during removal, and had to be pasted back into place.

The greatest threat came in 1943, when an Allied bomb destroyed much of the convent. Miraculously, The Last Supper survived, because caretakers had stacked sandbags against and across the extent of the wall.

After centuries of suffering, the mural that has been called “the keystone of Western art” was in trouble. About fifty years ago, an extensive renovation effort was undertaken.

During two decades of meticulous effort, layers of varnish, grime, glue, filth and extraneous paint were removed to unveil what Leonardo left us. More than a quarter century after the revival was complete, the restoration retains the vivid brightness the artist intended.

About twenty people joined us for our fifteen minute viewing. Not being sardined into a space made it easier to appreciate the painting.

It wasn’t difficult. The refectory is long, narrow, and dimly lit. The painting is enormous, and feels like an extension of the room. Monks in the refectory must’ve felt as if the Last Supper was occurring while they ate.

The painting was elevated so diners could see it from the far reaches of the long hall. From a distance, the perspectival effect is even more pronounced, making it seem like the Last Supper is occurring in an annex of the refectory, with the Apostles appearing even more animated than they appear up close.

The lines of the picture extend the horizontal layout of the sidewall cornices, pulling the friars of the refectory into the scene. Leonardo knew light was limited, supplied only by seasonal sun thru elevated windows, or by flickering candles when darkness fell.

He captured the dusk by illuminating the apostles on Christ’s left, who’d receive setting sunlight thru actual windows along the west wall of the refectory.

Even damaged and redone, The Last Supper is remarkable, capturing the shock of the Apostles around the calm center of Christ. The action is in their anxiety, and its reflection of ours.

The compositional choices are almost perfect. The design is naturally balanced around the figure of Christ, who occupies the center of the frame in both directions.

The Apostles are grouped in four clusters of three, in individualistic poses that distinguish each from the others. They recoil from the accusation Christ asserts. Almost reflexively, the viewer does too.

Within each group of three apostles, the emotion increases from surprise… to disbelief… to shock… to horror… in a crescendo from left to right along the table. But Jesus sits serene at the eye of the storm.

Many Medieval Last Suppers depicted Apostles as stiff and static, often with Judas on the opposite side of the table like a witness at a Senate hearing. Leonardo removes the halos, brings the Apostles to life by making them human, and puts Judas among them as an enemy within.

This painting depicts or evokes several crucial events in a single scene. Christ institutes the Eucharist and announces his betrayal. By grasping with one hand and reaching with the other, Judas confesses to everyone at the table and to all of us in the room.

Anticipating his action later that evening, Peter wields a knife behind Judas as he and John seek clarification of what Christ has said. Thomas lifts the finger that will inspect the wound of the resurrected Christ.

Leonardo packs most of the Passion into a mural he knew his educated audience would understand. The obvious omission is reference to the crucifixion itself, which perhaps explains its portrayal on the opposite wall.

With Last Suppers, Crucifixion scenes were common in monastic refectories. Santa Maria delle Grazie features an interpretation by Donato Montorfano, who must’ve felt like he was performing across the street from the Beatles.

But Montorfano got the last laugh. Unlike Leonardo’s tempera, his fresco transmitted thru time, and it has basked under almost as many eyes as its more popular counterpart. It’s the last thing we see when we leave the room.

JD

Milan, Italy

October 3, 2026

As with many cities, geography facilitated Milan’s fate. It’s always been a hinge between the Italian peninsula and transalpine Europe. This was partly due to the Romans, who moved their capital here in the late third century.

The Celts founded Milan almost six centuries before Christ. The Romans arrived a few hundred years later, conquering and expanding the settlement, and rechristening it Mediolanum for its position in the “middle of the plain”.

Under Diocletian, Maximian made Milan seat of the Western Empire. Thirty years later, Constantine came here to issue his edict giving Christians freedom to worship. Later that century, St Ambrose brought added prestige as bishop of a city that was firmly Catholic.

A Magnificent Fusion

Milan’s cathedral is the largest church in Italy, occupying what had been the central site of Roman Mediolanum, and the spot from or about which the modern city still radiates.

The Duomo is a magnificent fusion of florid Gothic, Renaissance ornament, and Baroque flair. Intricate, elaborate, solemn, and vast, the cathedral is a six century amalgamation of competing preferences and evolving styles.

It rose in the late 14th century when Gian Galeazzo Visconti started construction of the chevet. Delay intervened. When building resumed decades later, a host of sculptors ensured no speck of surface remained unadorned. Among others, Leonardo and Bramante were asked to design a cupola, which wasn’t completed till 1759.

The façade didn’t start till 1616, and wasn’t finished till Napoleon commanded its completion two centuries later. The final details were added sixty years ago, when the Duomo was finally done.

In the interim, a succession of Italian, French, and German builders crafted the white Candoglia marble into an ethereal assemblage of belfries, pinnacles, gables, and statues, including sculpted saints standing sentry atop processions of spires that sprout from the roof. Above them on the Tiburio is the gilded Madonnina, honoring the Nativity of Our Lady to whom the basilica is dedicated.

Delicate bays of counter-curved tracery, ornate rose windows glorifying the east face, and the elegance of more than a hundred pinnacles and three thousand statues offer misleading impressions of the scene inside.

Unlike the airy fragility of the external architecture, the cathedral interior is severe, imposing, heavy, and dim. Enormous columns line the nave, bounding it from two aisles on either side.

The apse stained glass is astounding. In chronological imagery from lower left to upper right, panels depict respective events of the Old Testament, the Apocalypse, and the Gospel of Christ.

The edifice is almost overwhelming, inspiring awe among even the most devout disbelievers. To capture its majesty, we orbited the structure a couple times, ascended the roof, and slowly absorbed the array of vaults, arches, sculptures, reliefs, altars, and spires that compete for space.

A Medley

Fortunately, our hotel is just off the Piazza del Duomo, so we’re easily able to explore on foot. Today we strolled past La Scala, and lamented missing last night’s opening of La Traviata.

At least where we’ve wandered, the city is remarkably clean. As are its people, who (by modern standards) are generally well-dressed.

Not that they’re formal. Most are casual. But they’re not slovenly or unkempt. We’ve seen little litter and few beggars. Unlike other European cities we’ve visited recently, we don’t notice an inordinate number of migrants, many of whom enter Europe thru Italy.

But as in Spain, Greece, or other southern gateways, many move on after they arrive, attracted to the richer welfare of wealthier states, or of countries that once colonized their homeland and offer comfort of language or family.

Regarding pick-pockets, we haven’t noticed any. But we recall Paul Newman’s reply to Robert Redford when Redford reassured him in The Sting that he hadn’t seen anyone following him: “you never do, kid.”

Central Milan is a medley of architectural styles — Gothic, neoclassical, Baroque, Novecento, and an unfortunate smattering of post-war junk. But nineteenth century Italian Art Nouveau predominates.

Behind many façades, whether sober or ornate, are hidden courtyards or peaceful gardens that provide respite from bustling narrow streets.

Directly across from our hotel balcony, the Church of San Raffaele encapsulates Milan’s architectural mix. Medieval in origin, it was reconstructed in Counter-Reformation style by Pellegrino Tibaldi, who contributed work on the Duomo in the late 16th century.

The split-level façade is of two orders: a Mannerist style of classical columns, niches, and pediments that’s heavier and more sculpted than earlier Renaissance work. The front wasn’t finished till the late 19th century, pulling influences from that period into the design.

Literature, Learning, and Art

Having seen some Churches, we checked in on the State. At the outset of the Renaissance, Gian Galeazzo Visconti consolidated most of northern Italy under his rule.

But when he died in 1402, his descendants became increasingly degenerate. Two sons… one perfidious, the other paranoid… ruled into the middle of the century. Both died without male heirs.

One left an illegitimate daughter, who’d married the condottiero Francesco Sforza. Sforza embellished the Castello Sforzesco as his seat of power and monument to himself.

On the edge of the Parco Sempione in the middle of Milan, this quadrilateral citadel of impregnable walls protected the signore from his own people and foreign foes, while offering a secure setting to patronize literature, learning, and art.

Francesco Sforza resumed the beautification of Milan. He enlarged the Piazza del Duomo into a space worthy of the majestic cathedral that had begun to be built. But the plaza took its familiar form hundreds of years later.

Small Details

On the north side of the plaza a triumphal arch provides passage to the 19th century Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a shopping arcade beneath a glass canopy connecting the Duomo to La Scala.

The complex is a cross-shaped arcade ornamented with stucco, stairs, and frescoes. The central axis features mosaics honoring Italian capitals of Florence, Milan, Turin, and Rome.

Beneath the dome are frescoes representing America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, each of which welcomes wallets to (or warns husbands from) an array of shops, cafes, bistros, and boutiques that line the axes of this deluxe gallery.

Up the cloister is the Rinascente, which contains a larger assortment of similar stores at (somewhat) more affordable prices. It also has a rooftop bar that overlooks the Duomo, which offers a seat where a husband can write while his wife shops.

Milan has history, museums, churches, and charms. But it’s these small details that matter most.

JD

Milan, Italy

October 2, 2026

My mother, stepfather, and I rented a car, left the airport, and drove to the station to meet my brother.

Brett had spent his last college semester “studying” in London. From there, he made occasional excursions onto the continent: France, Prague, Austria… and Italy.

But his pockets were empty when he crossed the Alps. He’d reached Milan a few days before we did, and needed to fill his belly and rest his head while he waited for us to arrive.

With what little cash he had, he bought a ticket and boarded a train. It took him to Apulia on the heel of Italy. The return trip would put him in Milan about the time our flight landed.

It was a creative, even ingenious, plan. The train would provide a place for Brett to rest his head and close his eyes. But it also offered an unexpected surprise.

An Italian family joined him in his rail car. The clan was stereotypically wonderful: large, cheerful, and welcoming to the bedraggled American in their midst.

The mother (naturally) brought baskets of food, and insisted my brother join the feast. Ample calories, good company, and a few winks sustained Brett till he returned to Milan.

When he did, he made his way outside the station where we’d planned to meet. As my stepfather circled the depot seeking my brother, he was taken aback by something he saw.

“Oh, my God…”, Jerry muttered.

“What?”, my mother asked.

“Is that him?”

“Where?”, I asked, scanning the sidewalk from the back seat. “Behind that hobo?”

“Oh no”, my mother gasped. “It is the hobo!”

Scraggly, disheveled, un-showered, sleep-deprived, with a mangy duffle flung over his shoulder, Brett waved and staggered toward us like a member of Napoleon’s army stumbling out of Russia. Because he loved my mother and wanted to stay married, Jerry pulled over and let him in.

That was thirty-three years ago. I’ve not been to Milan since. I was hardly here then. All we did was land, pick up our vagrant, and make our way to other parts of Italy.

I always wondered what I’d missed in Milan. As many armies as have fought for this city, it must have something going for it. Today we returned, and started seeing what it is.

Like eating at a restaurant called “Queasy” or boarding a ship christened “Capsize”, it’s disconcerting to fly into an airport named “Bad Thoughts”. But that’s what thirty million people do each year. This morning we joined them!

Milan’s main airport took its name from Cascina Malpensa, a farmstead that once stood where our plane landed. Where the farm got its name is a mystery.

One story is that trying to cultivate such barren land was a bad idea. Another has it that it was linked to a place where travelers were regularly robbed.

Neither of these explanations is encouraging, or seem like good reasons to call an airport “Malpensa”. But having arrived safely and avoided being mugged, we let it go, and hopped a cab to the middle of Milan. While waiting for our room, we left our luggage, and went for a walk.

The Renaissance usually evokes images of Medicean Florence, republican Venice, or papal Rome. Milan often gets short shrift. That makes some sense.

With its skyscrapers, commercial bustle, and northern European efficiency, Milan is often portrayed as less relaxed, artistic, and historic than its popular rivals on the peninsula.

This is probably unfair, stemming from the city’s reputation as a modern (and historic) hub of fashion, business, and finance. With almost seven million people sprawling from its center, Milan is the fourth largest metropolitan area in western Europe, the most populous in Italy, and produces about a fifth of this country’s economic output.

From our hotel beside the Piazza del Duomo, we wandered through the swanky Galleria Vittorio Emanuele on our way to the Brera quarter, something like a Marais or Montmartre of Milan. Artsy bohemians, narrow streets, boutique shops, hidden courtyards, quaint cafes, and Milan’s most prestigious museum adorn the district.

Like many Renaissance rulers, Milan’s domestic dukes and foreign kings ornamented violence with art, an impressive collection of which is housed in the Pinacoteca di Brera.

The palazzo was built in the 17th century, initially as a Jesuit college and later as an Academy of Fine Arts founded by Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. To accommodate paintings pilfered from his Italian conquests, Napoleon converted it to a museum in the first decade of the 19th century.

A neoclassical portal provides an elegant entry to the original building of Lombard Baroque. A graceful courtyard, a perfect square bound by two-story arcades on paired columns of Tuscan stone, lends rhythm and restraint to the heavy appearance of prevailing Baroque.

Around the plaza perimeter Doric pillars lift Ionic columns along the upper loggia, soothing the transition from the busy street, and offering a refined welcome to the Brera galleries.

We initially walked into the Library, which was almost a mistake… because I didn’t want to leave. Seeing her husband luxuriating in dark paneling, wall-to-wall leather-bindings, large globes, and chandeliers dangling from soaring ceilings, my wife started nudging him to go. The museum is what they’d come to see.

I’m glad we did. The Brera isn’t as vast, nor its collection as comprehensive, as the Uffizi or (certainly) the Louvre. But the viewing experience feels more spacious and relaxed than most renowned museums.

Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces—mostly from Lombardy and Venice—line parlors of coordinated color under high ceilings, with rooms arranged to not make you feel cramped or rushed.

Among the bounty are Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus, the haunting Discovery of the Body of St Mark by Tintoretto, Mantegna’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ, and Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, with perspective that pulls the viewer past the wedding and into the temple, tempting him to wonder where the last opening leads.

Under Napoleon, suppressed churches were major sources of loot. Monumental altarpieces, confiscated paintings, and other large-scale ecclesiastical art are a prominent part of the Brera haul.

It’s an impressive collection in an appealing place. But the volume is still overwhelming, especially when jet lag kicks in. As we retraced our steps thru the Brera, legs and eyelids were getting heavy. Under clear skies and a descending dusk, we returned to the hotel, where our room was ready.

That’s good. After a red-eye flight over the Atlantic, we weren’t eager to take an overnight train to Apulia.

JD

Atlanta, GA

September 29, 2026

About six months ago, I sold a put on Microsoft (MSFT).

In retrospect, I should’ve bought one. But I don’t usually buy options. In most cases, that’s a mug’s game… especially purchasing puts. Tendencies and time work against you.

Stocks usually rise (which is why perceptive speculators do so well when they don’t). When buying options, time is your nemesis. The clock consumes value as expiration approaches. But sellers profit as days tick away.

Option buyers have to be right on both the direction and timing of the expected move. If their prediction doesn’t pan out, they lose everything they paid.

But a seller merely hopes the stock doesn’t rocket the wrong direction before the option expires. He can profit even if the underlying asset drops a bit. And if it falls too far, he’s at least consoled with shares of stock he’s happy to own at the price he paid. Otherwise he shouldn’t have sold the put.

That’s why I prefer selling options to buying them. As Doug Casey puts it, when buying an option you must be very right. When selling one, you simply needn’t be too wrong.

Fortunately, I don’t worry too much about being “wrong” either. Scuzzy as it might sound, I think of myself as an insurance salesman. Most of the time, I collect premiums and reinvest the float.

But occasionally, “disaster” strikes. When it does, after paying the claim I sell a new policy to another client… and then collect more premium than I paid to buy the first policy back.

This approach extracts cash however the market moves, tho’ it must do so for longer when the underlying stock goes down. Usually, the price goes where we want… or at least far enough in that direction.

When I sold that MSFT put, I expected to let it expire by the end of that week. Three days later, I knew I couldn’t. The stock had fallen further than I’d expected.

The week before I sold my put, Microsoft had a superficially “good” earnings call… in which earnings exceeded expectations by 34%. But the stock shed almost a fifth of its value after CEO Satya Nadella hung up the phone.

It makes one wonder what’s going on. Like the Internet bubble thirty years ago, the AI boom includes a host of frothy companies promising an inevitable future of unimaginable prosperity. Was Microsoft one of them?

Microsoft is the cloud for OpenAI, and happens to own more than a quarter of that company. OpenAI is bleeding cash. If it dies, Microsoft will survive. But it’ll limp to the funeral.

Rather than be assigned the stock at a strike so far over the current price, I “rolled” the option to a future date. This premium earned me another half percent rate of return per week, which equates to about 30% annually. That’s below my typical target, but acceptable pay to “salvage” a trade.

Combined with a portfolio asset allocation heavily weighted to precious metals, some income-producing stocks, a smattering of speculative plays, and interest-bearing bills, this is my plan to see us thru whatever financial crisis comes.

So far, it’s working. Our portfolio tends to underperform speculative manias, yet outdoes drawdowns. Which is fine. At our age, we don’t need to seek the highest wave. Our goal is to avoid drowning.

In retrospect, I’d have made far more money buying a put than selling one. But hindsight doesn’t need prudence.

Throughout the drawdown, I managed my MSFT trade while it made me money. Even (or especially) in bear markets, stocks often shoot higher. This one did. But not before I was assigned the stock. I started selling covered calls, and have been doing so since.

My Microsoft trade was consistent with my put-selling strategy, but is a good reminder of a notable caveat. No matter how solid a company seems, we never know what its stock will do.

For several years after leaving corporate life, this is how I’ve made money. I don’t know which way “the market” will go, and don’t really care. Up, down, sideways… who knows?

I just sit back and see, and trade what it gives me.

JD

Atlanta, GA

September 23, 2026

Governments, as Murray Rothbard reminded us, are nothing but “armed criminal bands writ large”. The Trump Administration has done all it can to prove Rothbard right.

The United States ceased being a republic 160 years ago. But its government stopped pretending to rule one much more recently. In the 20th century it became an e…

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Atlanta, GA

September 17, 2026

Happy “Constitution Day”! - when politicians pretend to honor a document they usually treat the way a dog greets a hydrant.

This annual observation was officially established in the 1950s, by a government that had spent several decades tearing its charter to shreds. That’s why it designated this day.

Like persuading fish they’…

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Atlanta, GA

September 13, 2026

On the anniversary of 9/11, we described the harrowing tales of two people who escaped the towers. These heroes deserve to be honored, as do the dead, their families, and the countless victims who carry scars.

But during these comm…

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Atlanta, GA

September 11, 2026

As with Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or the Challenger explosion, anyone old enough to remember knows where he was twenty-five years ago.

I was in a hotel room in São Paulo. I’d arrived that morning off a red-eye flight, and planned to return that evening. Like it was yesterday, I still recall wh…

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Blairsville, GA

September 5, 2026

Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return.

– Laurence Sterne

Slow down, you crazy child, And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while

It’s all right, you can afford to l…

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Atlanta, GA

September 1, 2026

The fuss over Lake Ontario may seem like another dumb distraction. In a way, it is. But its essence is serious, particularly because many people involved are acting so frivolous.

As with most things Donald Trump does, his tariff “policy” made a mess. During his deteriorating disaster in Iran, the president decided it was a goo…

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Atlanta, GA

August 30, 2026

We’ve noted repeatedly how in 1913, with the establishment of the Fed, the monetary system got on the wrong track. Then, in 1971, it went off the rails.

By the late 1960s, the US government lacked real money to feed its fiscal furnace. The engine was suddenly incapable of pulling the guns and butter it promised to haul. So centr…

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Atlanta, GA

August 24, 2026

It took two centuries for the US government to dig a trillion dollar hole. As the ditch approached that depth, Ronald Reagan gave an Oval Office address. The president proclaimed that “If we as a nation needed a warning, let [this] be it.”

He then climbed in the excavator and ignored the alert. He wouldn’t be the last.

But at least Reagan recognized the problem, and knew it was big enough that he should talk to us about it. To the extent our current “leaders” bring it up, they do so with a smirk and a shrug. If the debt matters at all, it’s someone else’s mess.

By “someone else”, they mean us.

Stubborn Wrinkles

Today, a trillion dollars seems quaint. The pit Reagan saw couldn’t contain the interest on our current canyon. In his address he warned that, unless action were taken, the debt could reach that level: what Reagan called “literally beyond our comprehension”.

Last week the U.S. government eclipsed forty times that incomprehensible amount. Eighty-five percent of the total was compiled this century. Three quarters came since GW Bush left office, with almost a third amassed under Donald Trump.

Before long, it’ll amount to what Everett Dirksen called 'real money'. Since at least 1971… really since 1913… that's what we haven't had. It’s not happenstance that debt exploded when golden guardrails were removed from the U.S. dollar.

The chart above reflects debt held by the public (now about $32T), excluding intragovernmental debt for Social Security and Medicare. It’s from the CBO and OMB via the Peterson Foundation, which projected debt held by the public to match GDP in 2026.

That happened earlier this year. Gross debt (now $40T) exceeded GDP early last decade, and now races more than a quarter ahead of domestic output. By 2050, previous spikes on this chart will look like stubborn wrinkles on an ironed shirt.

But so what? For decades we’ve been told deficits don’t matter. Superficially, this seems to be correct, confounding doomers who keep predicting collapse. Killjoys have been screaming about “the debt” for fifty years, but everything’s basically been fine.

Or has it?

Steady Erosion

Were the curmudgeons really wrong? Comparing America today with what it was in 1971 (when Nixon took the golden governors off the dollar), it’s hard to deny something’s gone awry.

In many ways collapse has occurred, but it was more a steady erosion than a sudden avalanche. But however it happened, rubble is abundant. For more than fifty years, the future has been stripped to gild the present.

That’s what debt does. That’s what debt is. For the government to spend anything, it must extract resources someone else produced. When it incurs debt, it takes resources someone will produce.

Stocks, bonds, real estate, medical costs, and school tuition all soared since the debt took off. On the ground, real wages lagged as wealth was diverted to support the State.

This delayed and diminished formation of families, while reducing their size. It forced more mothers to work… or for women to forgo having children at all… which hinders future ability to service government liabilities. Young people are saddled with enormous debt they didn’t accrue, and are scolded for being lazy bums.

As with any generation, most older Americans worked hard, earned their keep, and deserve respect. But many also live on assets and property that have been bubbled-up by fake money and phony interest rates. They also receive Social Security (the largest line-item in the budget) and medical benefits (now the third largest, after interest) that come from paychecks of current workers.

I know, I know. Beneficiaries insist they “paid in” to Social Security and Medicare throughout their career. And they did. So did I.

But our money was spent long ago. It’s gone, and it isn’t coming back. The government ripped us off, using our “contributions” to pay current expenses. There’s no “lockbox” where each person’s cash is stored. Social Security isn’t “insurance”. It’s a glorified piece of a general slush fund.

What government did was criminal, and the victims are right to be angry. But they needn’t take it out on today’s workers, whose own pay is being pilfered to support their parents. If a mugger takes our wallet, do we demand he attack our kids to pay us back?

The Precipitating Ailment

Fiat currency and fake interest rates have enabled relentlessly rising costs, reckless spending, resource malinvestment, “quantitative easing”… and a $40T debt. These scourges don’t simultaneously infect an entire economy under sound money, which encourages saving, enables investment, balances trade, limits profligacy, and allows markets to send reliable signals that allocate resources thru a lattice of prices that tend to fall.

Inflation doesn’t merely depress purchasing power. It shortens time horizons and encourages selfishness, which tamps thrift, thwarts family formation, and degrades the culture.

Since 1971 savings have tanked. Worker pay lags productivity. Male income has languished. Working hours needed to buy a house, a car, tuition, and stocks has soared. Uncoincidentally, so has the average age at which Americans marry. Because of this, the typical woman has fewer kids.

Sixty years ago, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and St Louis were among the wealthiest cities in the United States. Each has since been hollowed out, former powerhouses now filled with abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and violent slums.

Cities aren’t alone. Much of rural America is as bad off if not worse. Across the country, Americans have gotten fatter, dumber, poorer, and more addicted since fiat-fueled debt facilitated more government meddling in education, housing, health, and endless foreign misadventures… which helped dig a $40T hole.

Fake money wasn’t the only impetus for this ubiquitous mess. But like cancer enabling pneumonia, it was the precipitating ailment most other maladies accompanied.

A Slick Attorney

Debt minimizers usually dismiss the burden by comparing it to GDP. But GDP is inherently flawed. Like a slick attorney, it misstates its case in ways that flatter its client.

The notion of combining trillions of individual exchanges into a single figure reflecting “economic activity” is preposterous. Much of that activity depends on the borrowing GDP is employed to dismiss.

Because government infiltrates so much of the US economy, comparing debt to GDP is like comparing debt to itself. Since the 1970s, the US economy has become almost as dependent on credit as wine is on grapes. To the extent borrowing is inhibited, economic activity slows.

About 17% of GDP comprises “government spending” which, if anything, should be deducted from output. Government creates nothing without taxing, borrowing, or inflating money from the private sector.

At best it redistributes the loot; at worst it destroys it. Often it does both. Anything it produces must be at the expense of something private actors would otherwise have done.

Opportunity costs exist in the private sphere too. But in that arena, we can assess what they are. Unlike in government, free markets have a dynamic price mechanism that allocates resources to their most productive use.

Relative profitability affirms that whatever activity is forgone isn’t as valuable as what actually occurred. And if it is, economic loss quickly identifies the error, and shifts resources to their more desired application.

As Mises informed us a century ago, government lacks this calculation function. Without market prices, it’s guided only by political pressure, bureaucratic guesswork, or arbitrary decree.

Removing government spending from GDP (never mind subtracting it) reveals gross federal debt being even more precarious than headline numbers suggest, rising from 126% of GDP to over 150%. Debt held by the public leaps from about 100% of GDP to 120%, leaving aside the innumerable ways government influence disfigures the personal consumption, business investment, and net exports components of GDP.

But government isn’t the only way GDP is warped. The entire concept is convoluted. As more money is spent, GDP goes up. That’s all the number tells us.

Like two neighbors paying each other to paint each other’s house, it makes the economy look larger even if no one’s life is improved or nothing new is produced. Under our fiat monetary system, GDP relies on debt to keep going up.

Because debt is what our fiat monetary system is.

Inevitable Eruption

The Treasury Secretary exclaimed that “Our message to our allies and our trading partners is that global growth is the way to take care of this mountain of debt.”

But this isn’t a mere “mountain”. It’s a volcano.

We can’t control what the government does. Whether it “takes care of” the debt by swamping it with growth as Bessent suggests (entailing an infeasible retrenchment in cronyism, military meddling, and domestic entitlements), by outright repudiating the debt (almost unfathomable given that Treasuries underpin repo market, mutual funds, margin, pensions, and most of the global financial racket) or continuing the inflationary rip-off of the last fifty years (the likely option), our best bet is to keep clear of the slopes.

Debt doesn’t go away. It’s only a matter of who pays. Those responsible for compiling it are doing all they can to ensure it isn’t them.

JD

Atlanta, GA

August 19, 2026

Bright red blood that covers towns and plains
Of Kampuchea, our motherland,
Sublime blood of workers and peasants,
Sublime blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!
The blood, changing into unrelenting hatred
And resolution struggle
On 17 April, under the flag of revolution,
Frees us from slavery!

- from the national anthem of the Khmer Rouge

Of more than 14,000 captives, Cambodian artist Bou Meng was among only seven adults who survived the Tuol Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh. While there, his wife was tortured to death and their children died of starvation at another center.

Meng’s ability to paint propaganda portraits of Pol Pot kept him alive, and he survived almost fifty years after he escaped. He died last week, cutting another personal link to communism’s atrocities.

Forty years ago I saw a remarkable movie. At the time I couldn’t comprehend the story. I still can’t. Nor can anyone who wasn’t there, or who hasn’t survived similar horrors, of which the 20th century featured far too many.

I watched The Killing Fields again last night, which prompted me to write this essay. As Hillsdale professor Brad Birzer put it in a wonderful review a couple years ago, the (true) story “made the horrors of communism palpable in ways even the greatest books could not.”

Overture

The French Revolution was the modern impetus for these unspeakable barbarities, which were replicated with sadistic depravity in Soviet Russia, Eastern Europe, Castro’s Cuba, Mao’s China, and throughout East Asia, Latin America and the continent of Africa. They were particularly pronounced in Cambodia.

By 1970, the Vietnam War seeped across the western frontier. Cambodia was officially neutral in the neighboring conflict. But it was deeply engulfed in its own civil war. This made it an attractive base for the Viet Cong to launch attacks over the border (and within Cambodia itself).

Richard Nixon wanted out of Vietnam. His plan was to strengthen South Vietnamese forces so they could take up the fighting borne by American troops. But to do so, the cross-border threat had to be eliminated.

Cambodia had begun to unravel. With the blessing (if not active participation) of the CIA, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by commander Lon Nol. Rival gangs began hacking each other to pieces, and slaughtering anyone who happened to be in the way.

Pogroms were unleashed against the Vietnamese minority. And the North Vietnamese began arming the Khmer Rouge.

Unbeknownst to the American public… and, like the entire war, in defiance of the Constitution… the Nixon Administration began heavy bombing of eastern Cambodia.

The U.S. dropped more than half a million tons of explosives, which slowed martial progress of the Khmer Rouge. But it likely accelerated its recruitment.

Its leaders asserted they’d “rather kill ten friends than allow one enemy to live.” They got their wish. In the late 70’s, their entire country became a gulag… and a morgue.

The Khmer Rouge thought Stalin too subtle and Mao too moderate. The carnage those savages inflicted over years and decades, the Khmer Rouge unleashed in days, weeks, and months.

Slicing, Strangling, Shooting, and Hanging

Barely a hundred hours after the US Embassy was abandoned, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. The atrocities began immediately.

Hordes of ruthless peasant soldiers emptied the cities. Over three million people were literally pushed into the countryside.

Or else.

Unlike the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge didn’t use gas chambers. They opted instead for slicing, strangling, shooting, and hanging.

Many victims were evicted from hospitals. Those who remained were stabbed, shot, or clubbed in their beds. Beyond infirmary walls, invalids, teachers, and students were massacred with the indifference of exterminators eradicating roaches.

Any who resisted (or merely appeared befuddled or frightened) were shot dead in the street. Bazookas fired at businesses and houses where human presence was seen or suspected. Before long, there wouldn’t be any.

The Khmer Rouge cut off the water supply its first day in Phnom Penh. After a week, money was abolished and all currency incinerated. Identities were stripped and private property prohibited. Total collectivization was complete in less than two years.

Historian Paul Johnson noted married couples being killed merely for conversing. Orphans and the elderly were abandoned to the whims of famine and disease. Relatives were forced to watch their children, siblings, and parents decapitated, bludgeoned, garroted, or axed in endless orgies of public executions, which were often preceded by horrific mutilation.

Johnson recalled a colonel having his eyes gouged, nose removed, and ears cut off before spending three days dying while crucified on a tree. A teacher who taught unapproved ideas was ordered hanged and hacked, with his eight year-old students forced to carry-out the sentence.

Birzer elaborates on the scope of the depravity:

“The Khmer Rouge probably murdered 86% of the Buddhist monks, half of Cambodian Muslims, half of Cambodian Catholics, 89% of the medical doctors, and 75% of the teachers. Anyone who had any pre-revolutionary education, especially in French and English, was systematically murdered, and the Catholics and Muslims were both seen as anti-Khmer.”

But the worst, as Birzer said, must remain unstated.

“The Khmer Rouge especially hated pregnant women, doing things to them and their fetuses that should not enter our soulful utterances and imaginings at all.”

Many Khmer Rouge soldiers were pre-teens who’d been ordered to brutalize animals to desensitize them to killing. Unfortunately, it worked.

Fanatical Intellectuals

As was common under twentieth century Communism, these sickening cruelties were orchestrated by fanatical intellectuals who were “educated” in the West. Pol Pot was no exception. Like many deranged ideologues of Cambodia’s Angka Loeu, he had a bourgeois background.

These revolutionary leaders were teachers, professors, economists, and bureaucrats. Many were schooled in France and likely influenced by Sartre. As Johnson noted, they detested cities, yet never sullied their hands with manual labor or the creation of wealth.

By 1976, the Angka Loeu controlled Cambodia, and imposed their plans to remake the world. In the first year after the fall of Phnom Penh, up to a half million Cambodians died by execution, famine, and forced evacuation. Many who survived probably envied those who died.

As agents of social engineering and radical disruption, the Khmer Rouge made the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward look like a Sunday stroll. In a matter of weeks, said Jean-Louis Margolin, “the country was razed to the ground and plunged back into a prehistoric era.” It would get worse.

Like the French Revolutionaries, the Khmer Rouge discarded the conventional calendar and centered a new one around themselves. They were now living in “Year Zero”.

“Re-education” camps were established. Memories were to be erased. Under threat of execution, parents and children were ordered to forget each other. Prior education or acquaintances could get you killed. Knowledge of foreign languages was a death sentence.

Everyone who wasn’t a corpse, as RJ Rummel relayed, “was a prisoner or a slave.” Birzer quotes a Cambodian witness:

“There was no spare moment in the twenty-four-hour day. Daily life was divided up as follows: twelve hours for physical labor, two hours for eating, three hours for rest and education, and seven hours for sleep. We all lived in an enormous concentration camp. There was no justice. The Angkar [meaning simply “The Organization”; this was the name the Khmer Rouge took for themselves] regulated every moment of our lives.”

Saner Shores

As happened in Revolutionary France and Soviet Russia, many of the insurgents turned on each other. Purges proliferated, and the uprising eventually ate its own… as Bou Meng (who joined the movement during the war against Lon Nol) would attest.

The regime’s deadliest year was its last, not its first. By mid-1978, half the high officials and most regional secretaries had been executed. These purges grew hungrier as they ate. Eventually, wives and kids of victims and targets were added to the menu.

Up to a quarter of Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge, victims of an intentional effort to be rid of “useless mouths.” And many who remained (especially including most of the kids) were coldly programmed to kill.

The carnage continued into 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded. To outsiders, these “saviors” seemed like cool comfort. But relative to the current regime, they were warm relief.

By the time the liberators arrived, bones filled the Mekong, flesh fertilized Cambodian fields, and cannibalism sustained many who’d managed to survive. Common decency, human dignity, and Buddhist compassion had long since disappeared.

The Khmer Rouge seeded the Thai border with landmines to discourage escape. Revealing how horrible Cambodia was, escapees fled to hostile Vietnam. And hundreds of thousands endured horrific conditions as “boat people” trying to reach saner shores.

Those who did were eager to share their stories. Like survivors of the Holocaust or the Soviet gulags, they made it their mission to tell their tales of terror under the Khmer Rouge. Bou Meng’s death silences another witness.

Few remain. Chum Mey is Tuol Sleng’s only adult survivor still alive. What he and others endured under communism must be remembered. Especially since the ideology that inflicted such suffering still attracts too many adherents.

JD

Atlanta, GA

August 15, 2026

Daily “news” is like a sand storm. In the middle of it, you see nothing else. But afterward, despite feeling a little disoriented and dirty, most things are essentially the same.

But too often these days, as the dust settles and we rub our eyes, we find ourselves a little closer to the abyss.

Politics matter far too much. Most pe…

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Atlanta, GA

August 10, 2026

Two years ago, “conservative” pundits rightly ridiculed the Biden Administration for suggesting inflation was fine while blaming its poor approval ratings on Americans’ ignorance of how little they were spending. Now, under the Trump Administration, the same “influencers” mock young people for noticing how much things cost.

Last week a “burrito debate” erupted when a college student said burritos shouldn’t cost twenty bucks. Many respondents promptly missed the point, explaining that most burritos don’t cost that much, and that these entitled whiners shouldn’t be eating out anyway. They should cook at home and subsist on ramen and beans, just like those critics (claim they) did.

But the student’s observation was less about burritos being expensive than the undeniable fact that the cost of many essentials keeps going up, to the detriment of those born too late to acquire assets before they soared in price.

Whittled Away

The tone-deaf response to a legitimate complaint isn’t just wrong. It’s economically, politically, and culturally idiotic. This isn’t about pulling up bootstraps, driving a beater, or walking uphill both ways.

Telling people that things they buy don’t cost what they’re paying probably isn’t going to change minds or win votes. Nor is advising them to eat beans because a degraded dollar has boosted the price of beef.

General price increases started decades ago, deriving from government spending, unlimited credit, and State meddling in essential industries. It’s no coincidence that housing, medical care, and education… sectors near the money spigot and with the most government subsidies, restrictions, and mandates… are among the least affordable, and whose customers incur the most debt.

That these increases accelerated after the 1970s… with the proliferation of student loans, expansion of Medicare, and advent of the “Greenspan Put”… also isn’t a coincidence. Nor is the “Nixon Shock” in 1971.

Wages have also risen, though not enough to compensate these costs. Even the yardstick is being whittled away. The dollar has lost about a fifth of its purchasing power this decade, almost half this century, and nearly 90% since it was divorced from gold in 1971. From the founding of the Fed in 1913, it’s almost entirely gone:

During this time, fiat money has fueled the financial system. Fiat currency creation instills distortions, depending on where the “printers” decide to distribute the loot. Connected insiders control the pump, and receive the first infusions when new cash is created.

This is how counterfeiting rings work, to quickly enrich initial recipients while slyly ripping off those forced to fill up last. Among the laggards are wage-earners, who tend to receive more pay after prices of assets (that young people own less of) and consumer goods (which they must buy) have already risen.

Instead of sound money that encourages investment and savings, we get banker bailouts, entitlement boondoggles, non-stop wars, and less affordable stuff. Under inflation, even items with falling nominal prices (software, televisions, mobile phones) cost more than they otherwise would.

A Separate Argument

Millennials and Zoomers didn’t cause this problem, and their wasteful spending habits don’t make it worse (though many of their proposed “solutions” will). For them to be scolded for financial irresponsibility by generations that compiled over $100T in public and private debt isn’t a good look.

The debate isn’t about burritos. Those are symbolic. The point is that U.S. “leaders” have wrecked the currency to pay for foreign wars and domestic boondoggles at the expense of Americans who resent being ripped off. Many are young people who were pilfered before they were born, and inherited the mess bequeathed by the people berating them.

Why must we act like their animosity isn’t understandable? Instead, youngsters are told to grab their bootstraps, get roommates, and eat ramen (all of which most of them already do) so that being robbed wouldn’t hurt so much.

Spending beyond one’s means is a valid point when discussing personal finance. But it’s a separate argument. A college student with a low-paying job shouldn’t expect to afford an $80,000 truck or a half million dollar house. Fine.

But that’s obvious… and a distraction. No one is arguing otherwise. How people spend money is a budgeting discussion, and a worthy one. Yet the topic at hand is the declining value of what’s being spent.

Baby Boomers didn’t sit meekly when “guns and butter” ravaged their paychecks. Nor should they have.

Why should generations that came of age this century not be angry that their elders eroded the dollar, incurred debt, and rigged industries to fund wars, support the stock market, keep house prices high, and make food, fuel, education, transportation, and medical care unnecessarily expensive?

Buying burritos and lattes isn’t what’s keeping young buyers out of the housing market. Till this decade, the median first-time home buyer was in his early thirties. Fifty years ago, he was in his twenties. He’s now almost forty, with the typical homeowner pushing sixty.

Home prices are outrunning wages, which are generally lower for younger workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 20–24 year-old working full-time earns about $796 a week in 2025 dollars, down from $825 in 1979.

While real wages for all age cohorts are now rising, this is the only group still paid less than it was when Carter was president. The 25-34 bracket just recently slipped ahead. Others did so at least a decade ago.

Renting is an option, but not a great one:

Bipartisan Larceny

Eating burritos didn’t cause this problem, which isn’t a function of who’s in office. More than 20% of all U.S. government debt (in constant 2026 dollars) accumulated while Donald Trump has been president.

But he’s not alone. In real terms, Ronald Reagan doubled the debt. About 70% (85% nominally) was compiled this century, during which purchasing power was sliced in half. That’s not an accident, or because entitled brats bought iPhones.

Cumulative real (2026 dollars) borrowing is more than $63T, against almost $40T of nominal debt. Inflation has erased nearly 40% of the real value of what was pledged. Two-fifths of the obligations DC compiled have been surreptitiously discharged by devaluing the money it’s denominated in.

The government, fixed-rate mortgage holders, and other debtors benefited. Creditors, savers, and anyone who held dollars absorbed the loss.

Age-Based Antagonism

The “Burrito Debate” has exacerbated age-based antagonism that is unfortunate and crippling. Inter-generational cooperation is among the greatest attributes thriving societies possess.

We often learn more from other generations than our own, many members of which are competitors for status, positions, or mates. The young imbibe wisdom from elders, who receive energy from youth.

But a proliferation of memes about out-of-touch Boomers and slacker Zoomers breeds reflexive conflict that foments fragmentation, stagnation, and rot (which is why it’s probably partially contrived and intentionally stoked).

Young people do have a lot of advantages their elders didn’t enjoy. As is often reiterated, their lives would be science fiction to any human being who died more than two decades ago, much less throughout human history.

But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this. Because Medieval peasants lived in huts amid perpetual plague on the edge of famine doesn’t mean today’s youth should accept being afflicted with inflation.

Many of the youngsters’ “remedies” may be warped (as were most of their predecessors’ when they confronted earlier challenges and caused our current ones). But the problem is real. If the idea is to dissuade twenty-five year-olds from embracing socialism, it’s unwise to insist they tighten their belts while their elders get fat taking the meat from their plates.

At some point, the kids are gonna get fed up and want in on the racket. If their parents can print money and incur debt to sustain stock prices, preserve pensions, and wage wars, why not grab some loot for themselves, to make groceries “cheap”, healthcare “free”, and rent “affordable”?

As Much Right

These prescriptions are imbecilic. But from the perspective of the perpetually fleeced who receive self-righteous lectures, they’re not irrational. They’re also politically potent, which is why it’s foolish to encourage revolutionary anger by treating reasonable gripes with arrogant condescension.

The people “helping the communists” aren’t the kids being attracted to it. It’s the beneficiaries of Fed counterfeiting, government debt, and protective regulation who keep denying the existence of a problem they caused.

Decades ago when the debt started accelerating, real conservatives warned that their grandchildren would be forced to pay for their profligacy. Now the grandkids are here, and they aren’t thrilled being stuck with the bill after those who ran up the tab left the table.

The “Greatest Generation” complained about their predecessors causing the Depression and a couple catastrophic World Wars. The Boomers protested when their parents gave them Seventies stagflation and Vietnam.

They were both right. So are Millennials and Gen-Z when they begrudge the idiotic wars, debt, and incessant inflation they’re saddled with.

Like their predecessors, they’ll persevere. But they have as much right to resent their ancestors’ malfeasance as their ancestors did.

JD

Atlanta, GA

August 7, 2026

We last saw my cousin thirteen years ago, when she hosted us at her house in Boston. She and her family couldn’t have been more welcoming.

We’d previously seen Moira years earlier, at our grandmother’s funeral. At that time, we’d not been together since we were kids. But I immediately lamented what I’d been missing. She was beautiful, charming, intelligent, and kind.

Our most recent visit reinforced those impressions. If anything, it amplified them. She was a delight, and her family wonderful.

A successful architect, Moira had a home that reflected the class and elegance of its owner. She greeted us with a glass of wine and a tour of the house. That evening we met her husband, Huard, and their children.

Their kids are about our sons’ ages, at that time a couple years either side of ten. They are, as their grandfather put it, “full of imagination, brains, good looks, and energy.”

Moira and I discussed our careers and whatever family history we could remember (and a lot we made up). She had opinions and was willing to share them, but always in her gracefully strong-willed way. I was often put in my place without realizing where I was. But I always laughed along the way.

Like his wife, Huard was knowledgeable, welcoming, and witty. Discussions of finance, history, politics, and travel accompanied our refills. It was great. After several hours, we’d cleaned plates, emptied bottles, and solved the remnants of the world’s problems.

We left their house intending to be better about staying in touch. But time passed, life intervened, and our best intentions drifted away… as they often do in the scattered society in which we live.

To my regret, I haven’t seen Moira since. We exchanged occasional emails. But distance and duties kept our paths from crossing.

Rita and I have been fortunate to see Moira’s father on several occasions. He lived in DC, and was a gracious host to us during years we made regular visits to Washington.

We loved visiting our Uncle Joe. He and his wife, Linda, couldn’t have been more hospitable. As a docent at the National Air & Space Museum, he took my flight-infatuated thirteen-year-old son on an extensive tour he’s not forgotten.

Joe is an impressive guy. He’s a phenomenal photographer who shares his impressions as he travels the world, which he’s done extensively throughout his life.

Culminating in the rank of Colonel, his career spanned several decades in the Air Force, including combat and extreme altitude reconnaissance missions in Europe, the Arctic, South America and the Pacific.

He was Air Attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, and later personally represented the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at embassies in Asia, Europe and South and Central America.

He was Senior US Military Representative to France, and Defense and Air Attaché to the American Embassy in Paris. After his Air Force service, Joe joined the National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council, where he spent more than a decade managing and directing military, science, and aviation programs.

During his career Joe earned a slew of awards, including (among many others) the Legion of Merit and the Royal Order of the White Elephant from Thailand. He received la Médaille de Paris, and the President of France bestowed on Joe the Ordre national du Mérite.

By all accounts, my uncle has been amply (and justifiably) rewarded for exceptional work throughout his distinguished career. But he’d have traded every honor and accolade to save his daughter.

Her ailment isn’t kind. There’s no known cause or cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease that progressively debilitates motor neurons that message the muscles needed to move, speak, eat, and breathe.

Moira received her diagnosis three and a half years ago. I was devastated when I heard it. I couldn’t fathom my lovely cousin enduring that awful affliction.

But she did so with dignity and grace. Why wouldn’t she? That’s how she did everything, with poise and character no illness can abate.

Moira was resigned to her situation, but not reconciled to it. As an architect, she’d developed a blueprint to fight her foe.

She had help. Her immediate family… including her loving husband, devoted children, and selfless sister… were indispensable blessings. For a couple years, I’d send Moira occasional emails to convey our prayers, but also to exchange news of what our families were up to.

One of her responses epitomized her optimism:

“… there is so much more research about ALS and many clinical trials in the works to target progression - and maybe someday a cure - than ever before…. The Healey Center, where I am being treated, is both the best clinic and research center in the country - and was also not around five years ago. I’m also very lucky to have gotten into a clinical trial that has solid science behind it.”

The clinical trial was lucky to have her.

Once Moira could no longer write, I’d send notes for her to read. Occasionally, Huard responded for her, while also giving welcome updates on her condition.

Needless to say, it wasn’t good. Being in Boston, and amid the steadfast family she’d done so much to form, Moira had some of the best care in the country.

But this infirmity is undefeated. More recently, I relied on updates from my uncle, with whom I regularly correspond. His latest came last night.

Moira died yesterday afternoon. She did so in her own bed, surrounded by her husband, children, siblings, father and Linda. After three years suffering steady deterioration from her dreadful disease, Moira finally found eternal peace.

The grandmother at whose funeral Moira and I became reacquainted thirty years ago went to Mass religiously, every day. To her, prayer was essential, not incidental; a steering wheel, not a spare tire. She didn’t pray only when needed. Prayer was always needed.

When horrible things happen, it’s easy to second guess the ways of God. I think we all do. I’m doing so now, even while knowing it’s pointless and impossible. As the former Monsignor at our church once put it, “God wouldn’t be God if He were God the way we would be God if we were God.”

Like a spray of foam trying to assess the sea, we can’t know why God does what He does. All we can do is trust His guidance and beseech His blessings.

Yesterday Moira received one. She’d done all she could, and had suffered enough. Embodied in the daughters and son who were beside her bed, her life endures in the legacy she left.

Maybe that’s the best blessing.

JD

Atlanta, GA

August 6, 2026

We’d first met about a year before.

When we did, I lived in San Francisco. But that weekend I was in Atlanta visiting a friend.

One afternoon, a friend of that friend paid a visit. When she arrived, “we” decided to go to the High Museum. The two women walked ahead, hardly noticing an…

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Atlanta, GA

August 3, 2026

“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

- Dr Anthony Fauci, 111 times last week

Last week was the latest act in our political circus, with Dr Fauci back under the Big Top. But rather than walk a tight rope, he settled into the safety net.

It wa…

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Atlanta, GA

July 28, 2026

I hadn’t planned to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey. At least not for a while. As one who loves Homer’s epics, I couldn’t stomach seeing them degraded, or used as weapons in our culture wars.

I’m sure curiosity would’ve eventually compelled me to watch it online. But initial reviews from apoplectic right-wingers…

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