In the past year my main income source has changed from Hofstra University, where I was a tenured Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business for 33 years, to being a landlord of the property at 214 16th Street (and to a much lesser extent, a landlord at 9050 Rte 28).  There is no comparison between the two roles in terms of security of income.  Every month I worry about he rents coming in on time to meet my heavy expenses related to carrying two mortgages and keeping open a bookstore which has yet to break even.  The 9050 property is probably underwater, and probably will be so for many years due to the decline of the Catskills as an economic region.

The big problem is juggling the wants of tenants, which sometimes conflict with each other.  I look to the example of my great-uncle P. M. Moore to steel my resolve in dealing with these issue. (see earlier posts on this blog concerning PM).  He was able to keep a reputation for fairness and humanity at the same time that he prospered through the steel boom times in western Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the 20th Century, and then the "great depression", and then the inflationary times of the mid-twentieth century.  It is not easy to be tough and fair.  It is one thing to be so as a professor assigning grades, and another thing to be making decisions affecting the rules for tenants.