It seems as if I’ve been seeing more and more articles advising us to avoid electronic devices in bed or at bedtime. Because I’m a word-game junkie, because I play Zen Word in bed on my i-Phone to help me relax before falling asleep, and because after I complete a level in the game, I […]
Those of you who saw last week’s post are fully aware of the attempt to take advantage of me and my … uh … digestive byproducts. And, like me, you might have thought the story would end there. No such luck. A week ago Saturday, I received registered mail, purporting to be from Exact Sciences, […]
Prologue In the summer of 1974, I was 20 years old. I was admitted to the Hospital of St. Raphael (now part of Yale New Haven Health) for surgical repair of a Bochdalek hernia. (Since most such hernias manifest symptomatically shortly after birth, how mine came to be diagnosed at such a relatively late point […]
According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha “Sid” Gautama was a prince born into the Shakya clan around the 5th or 6th century BCE, in Lumbini, which is now modern-day Nepal. His father, Suddhodana, was a chieftain or a king. His mother, Maya, died shortly after his birth. Sid was raised in luxury in Kapilavastu, sheltered from […]
Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I’d like to share my brother, Woody, with you. If you’re not yet familiar with him, here’s an introduction. Perhaps more than anyone else I know, Woody is a guy who understands the importance of dreams. Two examples: Woody will be 65 in November. He’s never driven […]
If you’ve read my book, Random Thoughts: A Writer’s Notebook, you know I was employed as a hospital orderly in Meriden, Connecticut, from mid-1972 to mid-1974. I worked the first shift, which was 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. My duties consisted of lifting and transporting patients, taking bodies to the morgue, occasionally assisting with autopsies […]
It’s a little-known fact that if the number of steps in your house — including the ones leading into the house — isn’t even, the house won’t be level. When I learned that, it freaked me out to the point that I decided to count all the steps in and around our home. I counted […]
Over the weekend, Anne and I went to Ballek’s Garden Center to buy a plant for the inside of the house and a planter for the outside. Anne goes there much more frequently than I do. And every time I go, I wonder why I don’t go more often. As you drive up the winding […]
The story you’re about to read is true. The names haven’t been changed to protect the innocent because everyone in the story is innocent, some more than others. The telling of this story is inspired by my friend, Charlotte Wittenkamp, by whom I was moved to tell the first part of it in a LinkedIn […]
There’s been much speculation about Ernest Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms, which was published by Scribner in 1929. On the surface, it appears to be the story of the American, Frederic Henry, who’s serving as a lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian army in WWI. But psychosexual scholars find a deeper meaning, […]
