Suprise Me

I miss the intense experiences I had working at my first job. Read More

My second advantage , I am certain, was that they had concluded I had gone completely crazy ... Read More

Are people merely “consumers” seeking to get the best deal from health “providers” based on market factors (and their satisfaction is important so they will keep being customers?) Or are they just people needing to heal?  Read More

GP My father was a GP with an office on the first floor of our house,  and we lived “over the store”    (See The Puppy in the Waiting Room,  Saying Farewell to a Special Guy, and Turkey and Trimmings with Flu Shot) My dad did it all – delivered babies,  took out splinters and appendixes,  and… Read More

Well, since this is a prompt about shoes, I figured that a pair of stories would be fitting. The first one is an excerpt from my book. The Red Shoes They were fire-engine red. Cherries in the snow red, million-dollar red; movie star pouty lips, just like on Mad Men red—an I-mean-business red. They had… Read More

I’ve never been big on sin. Sin belongs to a god thing full of good, evil, and punishment, straight-jacketing people with shame, and excommunicating so many nice things. Regardless of my godless stance, at age 11, I helped myself to three temptations. First, I sought out pictures of naked women in magazines, stolen from my… Read More

I was rushing to pack for Boston, but took the phone call. It was my client at the Farm Bureau Insurance in Indianapolis, calling to say the signed contract was being FedExed to my office. Perfect way to start my birthday weekend. Dan and I had lived apart for almost 8 months by this point,… Read More

I have learned that all “tweens” go through tough adolescent years; it seems to be a universal truth. Mine seemed particularly brutal, as we moved from Detroit to a near-suburb, I skipped a grade at this crucial period, the new girls were far more sophisticated and I had a particularly ugly adolescence with buck teeth,… Read More

A soft, blue velvet regaled The Los Angeles night. The concentric circles of the Hollywood Bowl’s procenium glowed with a warm, eggshell white. White-jacketed waiters served last suppers on trays and scuttled away. Onstage, two microphones bracketed a single, straight-backed chair. Without announcement, a man in white tie and tails walked from stage right, carrying… Read More

We painted the door green, and then in white we painted, “Dean of Repression.” We brought the door to the plaza in front of Holyoke Center, and attracted a crowd with our kazoos, our tambourines, and our RAT songs. Read More