I’m doing a lot of traveling these days — a talk in Las Vegas last week, a few days in Scottsdale before returning home, a quick trip to Minneapolis this week, etc. It is a interesting time but, truth be told, there are moments when I’d like to think about something other than retirement funding. For distraction, I pick up a couple of books. One is Kevin Phillips’ “American Theocracy,” a dissection of what has gone haywire politically and economically over the past six years, including how the U.S. now totters on vast layers of debt, from the personal to the national. While Phillips only touches on retirement funding issues per se, the book’s view of the future makes me nervous as a cat. But I finish it dutifully, eager to find respite in the other book I’m carrying, James L. Swanson’s “Manhunt,” the nonfiction thriller about the pursuit, capture, and demise of John Wilkes Booth. Terrific read, can’t put it down. And not a blessed word about variable annuities, pension funds, or Monte Carlo simulations. So here I am, it’s pre-dawn at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, I’m happily engrossed, a million miles from the moment. And I’m reading furiously, closing in on the end of the can’t-put-down book, have gotten right to part where the Union patrol has surrounded the tobacco barn where Booth has barricaded himself. Suddenly, my cell phone jangles me back to from April, 1865, to April, 2006. The caller is a producer from a national radio network. How she has found my cell number remains a mystery. Why she’s calling is not: this morning, even as Booth was being betrayed by his sorry-assed sidekick, the Wall Street Journal has run a short piece about a new Employee Benefit Research Institute survey. The survey reports that “many workers are counting on traditional pension plans to pay their bills in retirement, even though such plans are fast disappearing. Only 40% of working couples currently are covered by pension plans, but nearly two-thirds of surveyed workers — 61% — expect to get income from such a plan in retirement.” The story goes on to offer all kinds of other grim findings and expert opinions, such as how so many of us assume that we can comfortably live on 70% of our pre-retirement while the real Number, at least according to one quoted financial planner, is around 85%.

Do I have any comment? the friendly producer asks, explaining that her network is preparing a follow-up on the Journal piece. I comment best I can — haven’t had coffee yet — then set aside “Manhunt” for a more relaxed time.

That relaxed time, or so I was hoping, arrives a couple of days later. Airport again — O’Hare. Before cracking open “Manhunt,” I make the mistake of buying the New York Times. Shucky darn! (Midwest foul-mouth expression). On Page C7, there’s a story about how the financial services industry is trying to make friends with millions of “mass affluent” baby boomers who are in need of retirement planning. Again, lots of grim numbers and quotes, including this one from a senior exec at a big financial firm: “The typical working American is on track to replace just 56% of his income in retirement and that only one in five [will] retire with any retirement income plan.”

Nobody calls me for comment this time around. But I do feel obligated to put the Booth book back in my briefcase and work some of the data into a talk I’m to give in a few hours.

As for “Manhunt,” I just now finished it. Not to ruin the ending for you, but Booth got exactly what was coming to him. And so will a great many of us, if you believe everything you read in the papers.