Suprise Me

Nighttime in our community hospital was something to be dreaded when I was a resident.  It meant I was on overnight call, following a regular day’s work.  The hospital emptied of the day staff and visitors, leaving limited lab and imaging services, fewer nurses, a couple of physicians and emergency room staff–tag, you’re “it”.  When… Read More

Let me be clear. I am not an athlete and never enjoyed any sort of organized team sport. Just built that way. So PE was definitely not my thing. I am barely 5′ tall, small-boned, terrible hand-to-eye coordination. Great sense of rhythm, good dancer. Yes, dancing is good exercise. Anyone done a Zumba class? So… Read More

We'd had all the vaccines available at the time ... but this was the only time I refused a vaccine. Read More

Aristotle? Bible? “Ideal man”? Mit-what-zah? Sounds like a fancy way of saying “make your own bed” to me. But apparently, doing stuff for other people is supposed to be some grand declaration of inner beauty. Let’s be honest, though, favors are a minefield. A social tightrope where good intentions trip over awkward silences and unspoken… Read More

    Here are some variations on that old canard ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ – Imitation is the sincerest form of mockery – Imitation is the cheapest form of creativity – Imitation is the easiest form of learning – Imitation is the highest form of praise – Imitation is the lowest form… Read More

Call Me By Their Names My parents named me Dana after two relatives they never knew – my father’s grandmother Dinah who perished in czarist Russia,  and my mother’s uncle David who drowned as a teenager in the Rockaways. I like my name and never minded that it’s a bit uncommon, but it’s always disconcerting… Read More

Inequality and the role of stereotypes Read More

My birthday falls at the end of August, which is a lovely time of year, but a terrible time to have a birthday when you are young. Read More

Look What They’re Done to Your Pear, Milton Glaser! Lynn Truss who wrote Eats,  Shoots and Leaves: the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation  is a woman after my own heart.   She wishes for a ‘grammar police force’  that would hunt down and arrest merchants with ungrammatical signs on their storefronts and others who abuse the… Read More

The Beatles break-up began in 1969, the year I graduated from high school. I wished it weren’t so, but it was inevitable that they would go their separate ways, just as it was inevitable that high school would end, and everything would change. Read More