Health

  • Karen and I were once DINKs… Double Income, No Kids. We were young and relatively unencumbered. Karen taught high school math in Maple Shade, New Jersey. I practiced as a CPA — which meant I spent my days talking about depreciation schedules while wondering why no one invited me to interesting conversations. The partners at…

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  • How Ice Cream Saved the World and Then Ruined It

    I was born into a grand culinary experiment—one that began in the hardscrabble kitchens of the Great Depression and evolved through American ingenuity into a postwar paradise of processed food. In those lean years, dietitians emerged as unlikely heroes. While most people scraped by on rations and ingenuity, the stewards of nutrition saw opportunity. With…

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  • Living an Interrupted Life

    Living an Interrupted Life

    For those wondering how I am, I’m better. The warm February weather helps. There’s also a certain kind of magic in a Margherita pizza, especially when savored al fresco under the slanting rays of a winter sun—my wife Karen’s happiest place. Karen and I are simple folk; she was born in the projects of Trenton,…

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  • A Farther Shore

    A Farther Shore

    I write when I am well. Shall I not write when I am not?  You know it’s serious when the medical staff asks you twenty times to state your name and birthday within the framework of thirty minutes. I consider changing my answer, either name or birthday or both, to see if my diagnosis and…

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  • April 4, 2020

    March 28  Questions of priority and sanity are framed in stark relief by cataclysm. For instance, “Why is it easier to buy marijuana than a good book these days?”, Wendy Paris asks in an LA Times article. Closer to home, a friend of mine wrote:  “I’m seriously confused, Dunkin’ Doughnuts is still open but parks…

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  • Strange Days

    These are strange days. The earth doesn’t seem to be spinning as fast, yet the moon rises and we rest awaiting another day and the wonder of what shoe will drop next. It is a dreary Saturday with no sports on television, as the barbarians are climbing the walls, my retirement account is shrinking, and…

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  • Why Do I Play Pickleball?

    Karen and I just got back from Edmond where we won a medal in mixed doubles. Karen thinks we should get money rather than medals. I remind her that I’m a two time loser in side jobs…golf (I made $271.00 in 1982 as a pro) and writing (I received $107.20 in book royalties in 2019)…

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  • 55

    55

    …children believe their parents to be fools when they are of “a certain age” and then they pass through vintage moment(s), return to us, and want to hang out, ask for advice, laugh at our jokes (or at least not roll their eyes quite as dramatically)…and yet they are still our children, only smarter than…

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  • Breaking Bread with my Daughter

    I am eating a King Kong Maple Bacon Cronut in my daughters honor as she is graduating next week with a Master’s Degree in Nutrition and Different Stuff. Jenna is a constant source of wisdom about food and life and has taught me some amazing things, not the least of which is how to smile…

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  • As I showered next to a field of corn in Wisconsin I realized that this is no Hampton Inn. The rustic wood shower provides moderate screening from the house and barns south and west, but the view is entirely uninhibited north and east where dry corn stalks curve along the hill, the rustling ghosts of…

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