People at San Francisco General Hospital emergency room had T shirts printed up that included the tag line: “as real as it gets”.  That pretty much summed up the big urban County Hospital experience where I was a medical student.   The ER was where lives in crisis ended up—there, or in prison, or sometimes both.… Read More

Was there anyone on the panel who could not give equal weight to the testimony of a police officer? Read More

The UFW had some simple housing available in a local apartment building in Calexico, where I had stayed the first time.  It was pretty bleak, and soon one of my union contacts offered that I could stay at his place on the other side of the border, in Mexicali. Read More

Nighttime in our community hospital was something to be dreaded when I was a resident.  It meant I was on overnight call, following a regular day’s work.  The hospital emptied of the day staff and visitors, leaving limited lab and imaging services, fewer nurses, a couple of physicians and emergency room staff–tag, you’re “it”.  When… Read More

How clear it seems in retrospect. Read More

My mother sometimes asked when she started looking old. I notice I look a lot more like her every day. Read More

In 1989, there were several reports of tourists being killed while visiting game parks in Kenya. When people found out that we were about to travel to Africa, they asked with alarm, “Should you really go?” Read More

When people ask me where I’m from, it gets complicated.  I say, “Well, we moved around a lot.  I grew up mostly in Michigan.”  However, Michigan was just where my nuclear family lived on and off when not overseas, there were no relatives nearby, and we moved away before I finished high school.  In fact,… Read More

You can see a great distance from the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu.  The view is quite spectacular as it winds along the crests of the mountains, rolling up and down with the terrain; the wide path at the top of the wall turns into irregular stairsteps to accommodate the undulations and is punctuated… Read More

In the universe of trauma, it seems pretty trivial to describe a childhood horror movie.  Looking back now, it is hard to believe that I would be terrified by the old sci-fi low-budget 1950’s film, “The Blob”.  I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia that it was Steve McQueen’s acting debut, and music was by… Read More