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Driving west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I notice the taillights on the SUV ahead of me. Each light is a thin vertical bar with a horizontal bar jutting out, two-thirds up from the bottom, the bar jutting to the left on the left light and to the right on the right light. The overall effect is a Christian cross that has been divided in half lengthwise, then the halves pulled to opposite sides. I find the image very

Be ready for lots of juvenile references. I’m now at the tail end of a long Thanksgiving weekend. My wife and our college-age son took the opportunity for a retreat/adventure together in Ithaca, New York, leaving me in charge of the 6-year old and the rest of the household. We had an afternoon at the bowling lanes, with a stop for donuts on the way home. We ran foot races around the house. We played board games, card

Dog vs. Spiderman Prelude Our new friend Stephanie M. gifted us a bunch of dog toys, notably several stuffed Spiderman dolls. The contest of Dog vs. Spiderman has proven to be one-sided. The dog rips into the shells and tears out the cotton stuffing, leaving limp cloth Spiderman shells and severed limbs and heads strewn about the carpet. We can imagine dog-toy versions of Doctor Octopus and the Green Goblin cackling

Last Sunday afternoon, because I was not ready to leave Rochester, New York, I walked gamely into Bowl-a-Roll Lanes, an old-timey alley on Jefferson Road just beyond the shopping malls and freeway entrances. Most of the house balls were too small for my wide fingers, but I found a 16-pounder that fit well enough. I bowled a 146 for the first game and 169 for the second, both very good scores for a duffer like me. But

“Remember Me?”, now playing at the Hunterdon Hills Playhouse in western New Jersey, is about the life of actress Joyce DeWitt, famous forty years ago for the hit show “Three’s Company,” and ever since married to one of her fans and admirers, played by the impressively tall Jeffrey Atherton. Who should come knock on their door but Joyce’s old boyfriend and co-star, the late John Ritter, portrayed with smarm and swagge

When you die, you become a contestant on “The Match Game,” hosted by Gene Rayburn and featuring a panel of Hollywood celebrities. Gene sidles up to you, wafting alcohol and aftershave. He warbles out your first question: The baseball team is moving to the city of Altoona, Pennsylvania. Their new name will be the Altoona BLANK.” Cue the hip and snappy think-about-it music. Your response is Fish, which is excellent. Th

Last Sunday morning, the members of my small social circle of baseball fans were greeted with the shocking, terrible news that Bud Rosenfield, our good friend and a fine man, had just died, cause not communicated. Bud was (AND I HATE USING THE PAST TENSE LIKE THIS) a wonderful man—lively and fun, and smart and passionate. Also young, meaning he was younger than me–or at least looked it. In his career as a lawye

Back in the day when I was getting my rear end regularly handed to me by the admissions committees of medical schools, someone offered the following analysis: “They’re not staging the Olympic Games. And it’s not all about you.” Meaning, the mission of a medical school is to supply a steady stream of doctors and other health care professionals to the communities that the school serves. In the case of a public school,

Two weeks into my freshman year of college, I write and submit my first essay. The class is the history of western civilization. We are studying various thinkers of Grand Importance, including Aristotle and Saint Augustine and others whose names I have long since forgotten. The graduate assistant returns my work with the following comment: “When writing about history, it is customary to use the past tense.” I remembe