Suprise Me

On my first day as a Stanford University student in the fall of 1968, the sun was intense in a cloudless sky, and I was bursting with excitement. I was one of only three students from Michigan in the freshman class—and there I was, feeling invincible. After enjoying a 10-cent coffee at Tresidder Union, I… Read More

As you can see from the movie poster above, the name of the movie I am writing about is Knock Down the House, but I kept thinking that the 1983 song by the Talking Heads, Burning Down the House, would have made a better title. Maybe the filmmakers wanted to call it that, but the… Read More

Now that decision seems pre-ordained and perfect, as life never is--but it is for me. Read More

Mean, malicious, or mendacious? Just plain fun? To advance a personal agenda? What qualifies? Some rumors serve a noble end. In an unnamed presidential administration, White House staffers discovered to their dismay that only truly important people were invited to the annual Christas party, with invitees limited to high level, close to the Oval Office… Read More

Gathering in the den with my family to watch variety shows was a weekly treat, from The Ed Sullivan Show to Carol Burnett; we ran the gamut. My dad loved sports, but that love wasn’t shared by my mother, so he watched alone…though I often was in the room and now can follow any sport that… Read More

Didn’t learn about history, Didn’t learn biology, Didn’t learn about a science book, Didn’t learn about the math I took. In short, American kids have been robbed of more than a year of education by the coronavirus and the failure of the previous administration to even try to control the pandemic.  It has been frustrating… Read More

  No, I wasn’t pretending to be Batman, or Robin for that matter.  I left them where they belonged on the screen. It was a typical Saturday morning and my beloved grandpa, who I called Papa S., apparently a name I created, just drove up.  And yes, S stood for his last name Shulak, which… Read More

In September 2001 I lived in a country setting below converging flight paths into Boston. On the twelfth I went out to lie in the high grass, to scan the clear sky and to think. The emptiness. The silence. The peace. For this brief moment, the frenetic world I knew had stopped spinning—it was a… Read More

“What happened?” The woman in charge of Introduction to Clinical Medicine seemed concerned.  I had failed the course’s written exam.  “I don’t know.”  And really, I didn’t.  I had never failed an exam. We second-year medical students had been farmed out in small groups to assorted ophthalmologists and ENT physicians in practice to learn eye… Read More

The French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is reputed to have written words to the effect that  “This letter would have been shorter if I’d had more time to write it.” Perhaps if he’d had a reliable watch, a relatively modern invention, what short time he had wouldn’t have gotten away from him. For years,… Read More