And How Was Your Week?

Red-leaved Japanese Maple

I am not complaining—I’ve enjoyed my various engagements in the past 7 days. (It’s the people, stupid! Everywhere! I feed off them with what seems to be an insatiable appetite.) On the other hand, I guess I’m not surprised that I’ve been falling asleep in various poses, then snapping out of it a few minutes to an hour later in exactly the same position in which I faded out. In the 8 days that encompassed Saturday through Saturday last, I’ve given nine seminar-presentations in three countries—marked by 27 hours with the lapel mic in the “on” mode. (Plus a number of media interviews, some, well, interminable—I’ll go on forever if the interviewer is well prepared, but I am a bit testy when it’s clear the interviewer hasn’t done any prep.) Travel was: Tupelo to Memphis to Boston to London to Madrid to Buenos Aires to Frankfurt to Zurich; it encompassed 40 hours in the air and it appears 25,000 miles … or so. (Lufthansa, as usual, takes the honors.) And all this during the week before my 65th birthday—I think a shrink might argue that I was trying to prove something to myself. Susan would argue that I did, indeed, prove it—that I’m an idiot. I, of course, will reserve judgment. I slept in Sunday in Zurich, then enjoyed a looooong walk through and around this lovely city—zonked or not, it is a privilege of the first order to have such opportunities! (And, yes, the Swiss are tidy—I don’t even think the pigeons are allowed to poop.) Now in the midst of prep for a 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. seminar (“all day” in my lingo).

(Above, a gorgeous Japanese maple on the hotel grounds—in full fall farewell plumage. Below, street vendor roasting chestnuts—Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich.)

Chestnut vendor in Zurich