As a kid, I was sent to some unexpected summer camps. None were regular Jewish camps, which would have seemed the natural destination for this child of a suburban Jewish family. For several years I went to a YMCA camp on the Chesapeake Bay called Camp Letts. The camp motto was “Let’s Camp!” Maybe that […]
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, […]