About Living Reed and Bob Adams

Too many websites are "faceless", anonymous collections of text and images. I often wonder who is behind the site and what their purpose is. I think that's a mistake and I don't intend to repeat it here at Living Reed.

My name is Bob Adams. I've spent nearly all of the 41 years of my adult life (I'm 63) working globally in more than 40 nations in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. I have worked for non-profit humanitarian agencies, the economic assistance programs of the UN and the US, and several international business firms.

I live in Panama now, my new home. I'm an American citizen, pleased to be one, and intend to remain so for the rest of my life, but I am also a citizen of the global community. I don't see the global community as an ideal; I see it as simple reality, the natural conclusion of thousands of years of human history. Like any community-building process, it will have its ugly moments as well as its beautiful moments. Such is life in the 21st century. I can't expect anything better, so I'm delighted with what I have.

My philosophy of life is simple. Death is not the opposite of life, it's the opposite of birth. Life is the period between the two and has no opposite. Life is a gift, completely unearned and undeserved. What I do with this gift is incredibly important, even if I'm not sure why.

I am an analyst, both personally and professionally. I try to look at the world as it is, rather than as I wish it was. I want to share some of the lessons that I have learned over the years and Living Reed is my opportunity to do that.

My Other Websites and Publications

Clicking on the links below will open new windows.

Caña Viva is Living Reed's sister site with the same information, but in Spanish.

MiddleAge.org is a website that provides essays on dealing constructively with middle age, "mid-life crises", and the aging process in general. Although it has never been promoted, it has welcomed nearly a million visitors.

Retirement Wave is a site devoted to an active retirement and focused on Panama. When I created it, I thought most people interested in Panama would be retirees. Now I know that all age groups are interested, but it's too late to change the name! Tens of thousands of people have visited the site and 4,000 have joined as members.

A New Life in Panama? is an article published in Barron's, one of America's most important financial publications. It is really about more than Panama. It discusses surveys indicating that millions of Americans are considering moving to other nations and it caused considerable comment.

Street Signs is a widely-viewed financial television program on CNBC. The host of the show, Erin Burnett, interviews me on my Barron's article.

There are others that I could mention, but these are a few that will help introduce me.