When I encounter certain astonishing events in our natural world, I ask myself “What would a Martian make of this?” At the top of my list is the way trees drop their leaves in the fall and suddenly stand bare against the sky. Equally magical is the spring releafing. That latter process has been complete for some weeks now but I can still remember my surprise driving down our street one day...
“Cataract surgery? Piece of cake. You’ll be better than ever afterwards.” I got that message in one form or another from several friends. They may be right in the end but right now, three days out, I’m typing with one eye closed and my view of the screen one step better than driving in a heavy fog. When I had my post-op visit the day after the “procedure,” I was shocked that all I could make out...
Note: Last week I said I was not ready to deal with the situation in Israel/Palestine and Gaza and wrote instead about running. We were – and continue to be –overwhelmed with news from the region, and I’ve wrestled with whether I had anything to say that hasn’t been said already. I’ve chosen to add my own voice because silence can be misconstrued as complicity. For American Jews like me who have...
There’s a popular ice breaker that I’ve used with groups just getting to know each other. Tell us, I ask, something about yourself that most people don’t know and that might surprise us. My own ready response is this: For many years I was a regular runner. I once calculated that over the years I had run farther than the distance around the equator. With the passing years, from looking at me, that...
There were many things I liked about President Obama. However, my big disappointments with him came on my home court, education. First, there was the appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. My more prescient friends were more troubled by the choice than I. I pleaded to give him a chance to prove himself. He seemed like a good guy. He played basketball with the kids in the ‘hood whom...