How does one choose what to read after War and Peace? During those priceless months of immersion in Moscow, Borodino and places between, I was compiling book recommendations from friends and reading intriguing book reviews, pondering my eventual reentry into the world of good, but not great. As you might guess, I knew it would have to be something short, and probably not a novel, to reduce the...
The garage at the University of Chicago Hospital sells discount booklets for parking in their facility. I should have bought one for this month. This is what’s on my May calendar: 5/1 Physical Therapy 5/9 Gastroenterologist 5/13 Primary Care physician 5/19 Physical Therapist 5/23 Orthopedics 5/27 Endocrinologist Appointment not yet made – Dermatologist Rosellen could expand the list even...
Just as I was about to sit down at my computer to begin this week’s posting, my phone lit up with the announcement that “We have a Pope.” I’m not really part of that We, but it was a historic moment, worth a detour to CNN, where I learned that the new Pope was an American, an outcome that few had predicted. To add a personal note, it turns out that he studied at The Catholic Theological Union...
In one of our friend Howard Mansfield’s many wonderful books, there’s a piece that’s on my mind for reasons that will become apparent if you read on. It’s the funny/not funny accounting of some of the crazy things that drivers of a certain age in his tranquil town of Hancock, New Hampshire do to/with their cars which, by any objective standards, they should no longer be driving. Driving into a...
During the eight-day autumn Jewish festival of Sukkot, those who observe it eat their meals in a temporary shelter called a Sukkah, partly as a reminder of the hasty flight from our lives of slavery in Egypt. At the start of the meal, we are invited to mention the names of individuals, living or dead, real or fictional, whom we would like to join us at the table, people whose lives and work we...