Just after I gave her the vaccination, the woman beamed and said, “Thanks so much, that was a great shot!” “Not bad for a doctor, eh?” I replied modestly. She laughed. “Doctor, I have to tell you something. When I was sent to your table and saw that you were a man, my heart sank. […]
I never planned to write a second post featuring a mother robin. Especially immediately following the previous one. But now I have no choice. The day after I posted my last blog, during our peaceful breakfast we heard a frantic tapping. I ran to the front door, but no one was there. It occurred to […]
The trees are budding out. Spring is here. This reminds me that while pruning the wisteria last spring, I noticed a beautiful robin’s nest tucked between several twisting vines. I brought the ladder closer and climbed up to see three perfect eggs (robin’s egg blue, as it happened). In retrospect, I realized I’d heard a […]
The Banana Man was one of the few completely positive memories I’ve retained from childhood. I should never have tried to track him down. When I was seven, a sacred family tradition was that every Saturday at noon we’d gather in front of our little black and white TV. That’s when The Sealtest Big Top […]
“I saw Khun Ken eating like an animal!” Sukhorn said with a shy, self-conscious smile. Sukhorn was my lab tech at the Suan Dok hospital in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I was spending a year researching the effects of pediatric malnutrition. It was Monday morning, and I’d just arrived at work. Her statement, needless to […]
Lately, I’ve been seeing knurls everywhere. You know, those vertical ridges on bottle tops, toothpaste caps, and lids. At first I didn’t even know what they were called. But out of a dark corner of some unidentified gyrus of my cerebral cortex, I heard a shy, tentative peep say ‘knerl,’ or something like that. I […]
It was uncomfortably intimate, almost like a striptease. I was a member of a team of volunteers doing covid testing in central Washington. Our focus was on two groups: the Yakima Nation tribe, and migrant fruit pickers, both of whom had a high prevalence of covid-19. Though I’d worked with my teammates for almost a […]
I finally acceded to Annie’s gentle but insistent requests to clear out our rat’s nest of a garage. It had been sinking into a state of increasing dissolution for years—what was the hurry? But to honor her, I grudgingly agreed. Among the first atrocities to surface was a black plastic bag containing something substantial. With […]
The official gave me a pen from the “clean pens” container, which sat right next to the one labelled “used pens.” Then he took a clipboard that had just been handed to him by another patron, slapped a form on it, and offered it to me. That got my back up. “Excuse me,” I said, […]
About four years ago I went to Long Beach, CA to give a talk. But of more interest to me than the conference was that Long Beach was home to the Queen Mary. After taking passengers across the Atlantic for 31 years, this ocean liner was permanently docked at Long Beach and converted into a […]