Suprise Me
When I first heard that the earth was in trouble
Prompted By Earth Day
/ Stories
Burning Down the House
Prompted By Quick Take: New Movies
/ Stories
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…
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Righteous persistence brings great rewards
Prompted By Reconnecting
/ Stories
Now that decision seems pre-ordained and perfect, as life never is--but it is for me.
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From the Horse’s Mouth
Prompted By Gossip
/ Stories
A Really Big Show
Prompted By Variety Shows
/ Stories
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…
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Wonderful World – Not
Prompted By One Year of the Pandemic
/ Stories
1963: My First Caper
Prompted By 1963
/ Stories
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…
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Peace be with you
Prompted By 9/11 Twenty Years Later
/ Stories
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…
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What happened?
Prompted By Cheating
/ Stories
“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…
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Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Prompted By Time
/ Stories
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,…
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