Award-Winning Journalist & Speaker - Expert in ERISA Fiduciary, Child IRA, and Hamburger History
Competition is good. It’s the bread and butter of every successful team, organization, and nation. Not because it crushes the weak, but because it reveals who we are. It pushes the best to heights never before imagined. It weeds out those who are better suited for critical supporting roles.
Think of the purpose of competition not as a cruel arbiter of the human condition, but as a vast casting call. Every great story needs a Continue Reading “Why Competition Is Good (And What Mrs. Fish Knew)”
It’s that time again. The quadrennial event. The Winter Olympics. And you know what that means.
Men’s ice hockey.
That and curling. My most favorite things to watch. But that’s not all we watch.
Before going out with friends, Peter decided to start playing the movie Miracle. Again.
He had no intention of watching the entire film. When I asked him why, he said, “You and Mom will watch it to the end.”
He was right.
He likes the beginning. It’s a montage of news stories from the 1970s. If you were to choose one word to describe it, it would be “malaise.” I lived through it. Betsy lived through it. It’s spot on. Even Peter sees it. And he was born two decades after the events. That’s how effective the beginning is.
Of course, it’s also effective at other things.
Too effective.
And it gets worse every time.
As soon as the young players appear at the hockey training center, the time machine clicks inside my head. I see the faces. I hear their voices. I watch their semi-serious banter.
And I begin to cry silently.
Not for me.
For them.
(Did you hear that melancholy sigh?)
It’s the faces. I know them—or knew them. I knew them all.
Not the actors you see on the screen. But the faces behind the faces. And the voices behind the voices.
I recognize something. Something that pierces deep into my heart. Not the celebrity. Not the history. No, I see the guys I actually knew. The carefree band of brothers who defined my transition from teenage years to adulthood.
For those who don’t know, yes, I met everyone in Miracle in real life. It would be a stretch to say I “knew” them. In fact, I had more in common (and more conversation) with Herb Brooks than with any of his players. There’s an intriguing story behind the whole event, which occurred at an exhibition hockey game in December 1979 between the 1980 US Olympic team and Yale’s Hockey Team (see “Nobody Knew: When ‘The Miracle’ Touched Greater Western New York,” Mendon-Honeoye Fall-Lima Sentinel, February 27, 2020).
Here’s what I remember most about that event. I remember being the fly on the wall (almost literally, as Herb Brooks and I leaned lazily against the paneled wall like the wallflowers we were). I watched the players from both teams interact. In retrospect, I was watching Miracle as it actually happened. The way the players carried themselves. The ordinary confidence. The playful banter. The modest swagger.
They were equals. They weren’t Olympic legends. They weren’t Yale men. They were regular guys. Playing the game they love.
They were like me. Like you. Like your friends. Not trying to be famous. Just wanting to get into the game.
That was life before the Miracle — before history gave it a name.
And that’s the most important takeaway. We weren’t looking to make a splash. We just wanted to be let into the pool.
Such is the lament of the second wave of Baby Boomers—what some call “Generation Jones.” This is the younger half. The quiet half. The half that didn’t burn draft cards. That didn’t march in the streets. But we inherited the aftershocks of our older cohort.
We inherited hand-me-downs, cultural fatigue, and a stereotype of a louder time.
We weren’t aiming to change the world. We just wanted a good job, a good family, and good friends. Just a decent shot.
We just wanted to “play hockey.”
That’s what I see captured in the eyes of those Miracle boys. I look through the actors and to a time in life when the future was wide open, dreams were assumed, and time was abundant.
The burden of age has replaced expectation with reality. We see what really happened. We see whose dreams drifted into oblivion. We see who quietly fought a never-ending battle that would ultimately consume them. We see who never got the shot they hoped for—the one they believed was promised.
And that’s why the movie hurts more. I’m not watching victory. I’m watching expectation. I’m feeling what they thought life would be.
But I’m experiencing it all through a lens that has proven how hard life can be.
Again.
I weep for the Forgotten Boomers.
They weren’t radicals. They weren’t revolutionaries. They didn’t seek headlines.
They were steady. Stalwart. Work-hard-and-go-home.
While others searched for causes, we embraced responsibility.
We didn’t perform conviction. We lived it.
And we didn’t care about what anyone thought. We cared about what we thought of ourselves. And that we remained true to our moral compass.
But here’s the question no one asks: Does a generation that refuses to advertise its virtues get credit for having them? Or is that the actual virtue?
This was us in our early twenties. We stayed under the radar. We didn’t shout. We didn’t protest. We just worked. That was our guiding light.
And that was our Miracle.
Not Lake Placid.
Not Al Michaels.
But the quiet generation inside the noisy one. The ones who raised families, showed up for work, took care of business, didn’t complain, and didn’t ask for applause.
And when the time finally came for us to emerge from our cocoon, we did. We started businesses. We invigorated civic organizations, clubs, and fraternities. When the time came for us to take a larger role in our churches, we did.
In short, when asked to serve, well, that was just part of our job. It wasn’t for the glory. It was something more.
Seeing that youthful optimism and hope in Miracle brings it all back.
Again.
I cry not because it is gone, but because it was real—and so many deserved more.
Ironically, the anticlimax of Miracle speaks to the anticlimax of its real meaning. In the movie, beating the Soviets in the semi-final stands as the high point. Beating Finland for the gold was merely an afterthought.
But gold was the real goal, wasn’t it? The movie doesn’t make it seem that way.
In that moment, as the final credits roll, I realize a greater understanding, a greater appreciation for the boys of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team. They didn’t become legends in the NHL. They became men. They went to work. Many ended up working in the financial services industry—just like the rest of us from that era.
Maybe the Forgotten Boomers were never meant to be the headline. Maybe we were meant to be the backbone.
And maybe the real Miracle wasn’t beating the Soviets. It was who we were before the Miracle, before the world noticed. It was becoming the men we said we would be.
Quietly.
Without cameras.
Without applause.
Massacre of Wyoming (Pennsylvania), 1858, by Alonzo Chappel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Captain Zebulon Parish saw the man hurry out of the dense woods into the field. The smell of burning wood wafted through the air around him. In the distance, black smoke rose above the treetops. He thought he heard muffled screams, but it might have been the wind whipping through the forest.
His eyebrow furled as the curious settlers assembled. He was the captain. They looked to him for guidance.
Zebulon recognized the man. It was Lebbeus Hammond.1 He didn’t look too good. Out of breath, he huffed and puffed, “We’ve been attacked!”
This is bad, was Zebulon’s immediate conclusion.
His mind raced. They’re probably coming for us next. How long do we have? And should we prepare for defense or run? Continue Reading “Jasper Parrish And The Terror At Civilization’s Edge”
The monument at the site of the Boyd and Parker ambush. The monument reads: “Sacred To The Memory of Lieut. Thomas Boyd and Sergt. Michael Parker Who were captured and afterward tortured and killed. Afar their bones may lie/but here their patriot blood/baptized the land for aye/and wideened freedom’s flood”
Photo credit: Ed Dehm, CC BY-SA 3.0 httpcreativecommons.orglicensesby-sa3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the darkness of September 1779, Thomas Boyd heard the muffled squeal of death.
Murphy, he thought. Can’t that man follow orders?
Boyd—an officer barely into his twenties—missed the fatal irony of his question.
But he did sense his mission was compromised. Boyd had orders to scout the British forces, not to engage them. Timothy Murphy’s shot must have echoed through the woods, alerting the Seneca. Worse, the others got away. No doubt the Indian would quickly warn his brothers. The encounter yielded one scalp, a horse saddle, and a bridle.1 It seemed hardly worth the risk Sullivan’s men now faced.
The scouts needed to get out. And they needed to get out quickly. More importantly, Boyd needed to get word back to the General sooner. He dispatched two runners to ride ahead. They returned to report discovering a handful of Seneca on horseback up ahead.2
The young lieutenant remained confident that he would meet up with the main army soon enough. He rode on with his troops. They had not gotten far before they came upon Continue Reading “Thomas Boyd And The Brutality Of The Western Frontier”
On a late Winter morning in 1775, William French woke up for the last time. The lively 22-year-old lived in the Town of Bennington—itself scarcely older than he was.
Self-named by Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, Bennington became—in 1741—the first township granted west of the Connecticut River. It was a fact that would soon matter far more than anyone expected.
French headed to Westminster, a small hamlet on the west side of the Connecticut River, nestled in the broad curve of the oxbowing waterway, in the fertile eastern valley beneath the Green Mountains.
That afternoon, French walked along King’s Highway to the farmhouse of Capt. Axariah Wright, an eccentric old patriot. There he met Daniel Houghton and nearly 100 other men. They were there to confront a problem they believed could no longer be avoided.Continue Reading “William French and the Westminster Massacre”
Scott Adams did more than create a popular cartoon that spoke to a generation of office workers. source: Art of Charm, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
It’s a popular Hollywood trope: a “dead” man lives to see his own funeral. He’s fascinated by the reactions of those around him. Sometimes, he’s pleasantly surprised. Sometimes sorrowfully depressed. Sometimes downright angry. Depending on the movie, it’s either a fake death or a supernatural out-of-body experience.
As with most things, it all depends on what you’re watching.
And that, in a nutshell, summarizes the wisdom of Scott Adams.
The popular cartoonist—an ex-engineer with an MBA—turned his front-line experience into a practical philosophy, one useful both in business and in life. A trained hypnotist, he became a serious student of persuasion. He then blossomed into a master scholar. Of course, it was only a matter of time that his expansive talent stack would get him into trouble.
In 2015, long before the usual chattering class, Adams used his persuasion lens to quickly Continue Reading “Scott Adams’ (Very) Public Wake”
Before America looked west, it looked here.
Before the wild wilderness of Alaska, before the trans-Mississippi west, even before the Appalachian forests and the Cumberland Gap, the Greater Western New York region stood as America’s First Frontier. It was a rugged place where individuals could test the fruits of its promise—and sometimes discover its limits.
But it was tamed.
Quickly tamed.
Too quick for history books to notice.
And so, it slipped quietly out of the national memory.
Until a sportscaster unintentionally reframed its true origin story.
When Chris Berman proclaimed, “Nobody circles the wagons like the Buffalo Bills,” he wasn’t merely referring to a professional football team. He was describing a people. Perhaps without realizing it, he was echoing the rich experience of the region’s earliest pioneers—men and women who braved brutal winters to build permanent homes in the post-Revolutionary War virgin arboreal woodlands and lush valleys of the Greater Western New York Region.
Far beyond the settled coastal cities of the Atlantic, this was the first true frontier of the new nation. Unlike what would later become Kentucky and Ohio, it lay within an original state rather than a federal territory. That distinction mattered more than history remembers.
Europeans called Western New York “terra incognita” during the colonial era. It was, however, home to the Seneca and Cayuga, two member nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. The French were the first Europeans to pass through. Their explorers camped here. Their missionaries converted here. Their soldiers fought and built forts here.
But they didn’t settle here.
That omission was not accidental. Western New York was too valuable to ignore—and too dangerous to control without alliances.
It became a critical artery in the economy of New France, later brokered by the Dutch, and ultimately claimed by the British. That final transfer was secured not by force alone, but through alliance with the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
The Seneca served as “Keepers of the Western Door.” Ostensibly defensive, that door became a gateway to expansion. During the Beaver Wars, the Confederacy used it to eliminate the Erie tribe and to push its Algonquin adversaries off the map. This left the lands west of the Genesee River wholly vacated a century before the Revolutionary War.
The consequences were profound. French trappers lost their allies. British traders gained control of the valuable fur routes along the fertile waters that flow through western New York and beyond. And America’s First Frontier became one of the earliest battlegrounds for European supremacy in upper North America.
The Western New York region has always been a strategic crossroads.
Long before French missionaries first set foot in the New World, the feud between the Confederacy and its Iroquoian and Algonquin neighbors had been ongoing. The arrival of the Europeans didn’t change the dynamic. It intensified it.
At one time or another, all four Old World powers laid claim to the region. Ambitious Spanish claims, the French fur trade, the Netherlands river-based financial colonies, and the British desire for Empire, all collided here (and elsewhere).
Spain’s claim existed only on paper. They never came close. The Dutch, on the other hand, made the unfortunate decision to choose the Erie as their partners. When the Cat Nation disappeared, New Netherlands shortly followed, mostly without a fight. Mostly.
The French and the British, however, did what the French and the British always did. They went to war. Whether you call it “The French and Indian War” (as North Americans do) or the “Seven Years’ War” (as Europeans do), its outcome determined the fate of American colonies.
Decades later, before Horace Greeley championed Manifest Destiny when his New York Tribune pronounced, “Go West, young man,” New Englanders loaded up their wagons and headed down the ancient Central Trail of the Iroquois Confederacy. They looked past Geneva, at that time, the westernmost settlement in New York State (which itself became a point of controversy).
The Greater Western New York Region promised opportunity and risk in equal measure. It became the proving ground for a new nation’s first attempts to settle undeveloped land.
But it was more than that.
As George Washington quickly learned, America’s first frontier wasn’t just about the pioneers; in true mythic form, this west also posed diplomatic challenges regarding the conquered peoples who had previously claimed the land. The dance between state and federal power in the infant United States proved precarious. Fortunately, Washington’s wisdom and restraint helped protect both the State of New York and the Seneca Nation.
Still, uncertainty lingered.
Though technically part of New York State, the western portion of this original colony lacked clearly defined boundaries. Not until the War of 1812 would the dispute of the “Mile Strip” on the Niagara River be resolved.
Before then, however, the future of the Greater Western New York Region was cloudy at best. It stood on the cusp of history, on the edge of possibility.
Would that history be British, as part of Upper Canada?
Would it remain tethered to America and New York State?
Or would it become an independent state, following Vermont’s example?
Indeed, within a decade of the Paris Treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, no fewer than three attempts were made to separate Greater Western New York from New York State. What was the motivation for this? Why did they fail? How did state and local leaders respond? And what does that response reveal about the fragile architecture of the early republic?
Those unanswered questions are not historical curiosities.
They are the central mystery of our own backyard.
As we celebrate America’s 250th, perhaps now is a good time to rediscover a chapter of our past that unfolded quietly, quickly, and almost invisibly.
After all, history is not what survives in a bland textbook. It is more alive than that. More contingent. More human. And to the attentive ear, the all-seeing eye, and the genuinely curious, it often reveals far more than we were ever taught to notice.
A history too often skipped in classrooms.
A history unfamiliar to many elected officials.
A history even seasoned historians sometimes overlook.
It’s the history of America’s forgotten first frontier.
And it leads, inevitably, to one enduring question that can finally be revealed to you:
Why did Vermont become a state—
but Greater Western New York did not?
To understand why that question was ever asked—and why it was never answered—we must return to the moments when authority was uncertain, allegiance was fluid, and the future of this frontier was still undecided.
Interested? Have you joined the 1786 Project yet? Go to http://1786project.com/ to access cool stuff about the history of the Greater Western New York Region! (And find out how to participate in the hidden treasure hunt!)
There’s a reason your car doesn’t enjoy driving in the city (or Henrietta). Too many red lights. Vehicles can’t stand all that stopping and restarting. That’s what red lights force them to do. Cars hate it. And it kills your miles per gallon, too.
What red lights do to cars, Mondays do to you.
Think about it. Why has no other day been as universally panned as Monday? From Garfield’s primordial meme—“I hate Mondays”—to the Carpenters’ immortal “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” the first day of the week has always borne the brunt of criticism.
Unlike what the calendar implies, Sunday is not really the first day of the week. For those unfamiliar with the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the seventh day of creation; ergo, the seventh day of the week.
But even if you go by your day planner, at the very least, Monday remains the first day of Continue Reading “Too Many Mondays”
That’s the difference between a great actor and a great writer. And never the twain shall meet. To be fair, there’s also a difference between a mediocre actor and a mediocre writer.
On the other hand, there is no difference between a bad actor and a bad writer—you keep watching and reading them for the same reason you keep watching those videos of old-time steam engine train wrecks. They’re so bad they border on slapstick.
But this is about where great writing and great acting (and, if you’re a Sinatra fan, great singing) do not intersect. Both please you. That’s how they’re alike. We’re not interested in Continue Reading “I Memorize The Meaning, Not The Lines. Should You?”
Did you ever have a dream you kept putting off? A place you always wanted to visit? A story you always wanted to tell?
So did I. (Notice the past tense.)
This site might give you a clue about how I accomplished this. Who knows? It may even reveal to you how you can realize your own greatest goals.
Interested in learning more? Find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed.
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A European Tug Of War
Why, then, would the powers of the day go through all the trouble of pretense?
Well, first, it was all pretend. Europeans did come to this New World. Some explored. Some conquered. Many settled. Still, their activities covered only a small fraction of their claims.
But it was the claim itself that rendered prestige. It was a symbol of potency, a symbol of Continue Reading “A European Tug Of War”