Governor`s Travels, by Gov. Angus King: on Principles & Values

Learned lessons of retirement by travel after governorship

1. Have a life: before the transition hits. In other words, maintain some balance, anything outside of work, so that what you're transitioning to isn't wholly new.
2. Start your planning before you leave the job
3. Have something to do the very first day.
4. Whatever you do next should be engaging. Notice I didn't say "important" or "significant."
5. Let go of the old job. I didn't read any Maine newspapers at any point during the trip.
6. While not mandatory, travel is a good idea.
7. Take a chance; be a little crazy. This is your big opportunity to live a dream. Enjoy the trip!

Greatest documentary ever: Ken Burns' "The Civil War"

We started watching segments of Ken Burns' epic miniseries "The Civil War." (If you haven't seen this lately, I urge you to buy it or rent it. In my view, it is the greatest documentary film ever made, enveloping the viewer in the sweep of the unfolding catastrophe in terms of both high-level strategy and its impact on individual men and women not much different from ourselves.)

If you go back to the speeches and rhetoric of the secessionists from the 1840s through the outbreak of the war, you'll find passages eerily similar to what we're hearing today, complete with references to the Second and Tenth Amendments, enumerated powers, the right of secession, and even the Boston Tea Party.

Regret the things you did; rather than things you didn't do

"When you get to be my age," he wheezed, "you're going to regret things about your life; see that you regret the things that you did, rather than the things you didn't do."

Wow. What a profound observation. Err on the side of action.

I have found that it's always easier to summon a list of arguments against any particular course of action, especially if that action involves any change from the routine or expected.

How about this one--does it make sense to run for governor when you've never even run for dogcatcher, have no affiliation to a political party, no organization, no staff, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% name recognition?

In the latter case, the final decision was explicitly based upon the old man's advice.