Suprise Me

Berkshire County can feel like a very sleepy backwater when we have to wait for hours while a bomb squad with a robotic device drives to our rescue along the Mass Pike, all the way from Boston. Read More

Until the pandemic hit, the thing that caused me the most stress was my back pain. Read More

The gradual decline of print newspapers is a great sadness to me. While I do read the news online, it is not the same. I can only describe it as a loss of serendipity. Read More

The schout whereupon demanded that the defendant "shall be punished as a tumultuous and seditious person . . . " Read More

As Mark Twain said, “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” Read More

"Remember, always be a lady," Grammy said. Read More

Jeffrey (now Vicki, but not in 2002, so, for purposes of this story, I will refer to my younger child as Jeffrey) was a non-believer. He told us at the age of 3 he didn’t believe in God. I still wanted him to go through with religious education to understand his background, his place in… Read More

This isn’t about my fame or lack of it. This is about secondhand fame. To be precise, this is about my father’s famous friend: Carol Channing. My dad grew up in San Francisco, and as a precursor to his eventual career as a drama teacher, he got involved in theater during his high school years.… Read More

Looking back at August-September 2001 brings to mind the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The two weeks prior to what we now just refer to as 9/11 contained some of the best times of my life, and then, of course, the… Read More

Fleiss. Hmmm. The name might sound vaguely familiar to you…something about a woman…ohhh, right…Heidi Fleiss, the “Hollywood Madam” who, in the 1990s, ran an upscale prostitution ring in L.A. But what does she have to do with our prompt, Family Medicine? Heidi’s father was Paul Fleiss, my daughter, Erin’s, pediatrician. And when Erin grew up… Read More