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A Not So Brief Moment in Time – Retrospective Humor
Sharing details about bowel problems is generally considered to be crude or at the least, TMI. However, I want to share it as it is funny in retrospect. I was having indigestion troubles back in my thirties and was sent for X-rays of my upper and lower Gastrointestinal (GI) tracts. I had them done … Continue reading A Not So Brief Moment in Time – Retrospective Humor
Sleepless Toil
Written: 7/30/2012 I awake suddenly, startlingly, with an all too familiar sense of dread and the lingering fragments of a bad dream. It’s 2:38 AM. As best I can figure, I have slept for 12 minutes – at tops. My mind racing, my emotions swirling, I labor exhaustingly, trying to force unconsciousness back to the … Continue reading Sleepless Toil
Battling Sociopathic Genocide
NOTE: This piece was written in free-flow, stream of consciousness mode while thinking about social alienation. It should be viewed as prose. On reflection, I'm not sure there's any meat with the potatoes. Isolation and hopelessness are the seeds of social discontent and desperation. Left unattended, they transform into anger and resentment. When fertilized by … Continue reading Battling Sociopathic Genocide
A Special Christmas Greeting
Our youngest child, Rachel (now a mom of two), was a very active and curious five-year-old. At the time, we were living in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. In the weeks before Christmas, our neighborhood boasted many beautifully decorated homes. Although we were Jewish and did not put up any lighting or decorations, … Continue reading A Special Christmas Greeting
A Youthful Matter of Life or Death
Growing up with a cocktail mix of neurological disorders (in my case ADHD, major depression, auditory learning disability, latent frontal lobe development, and general anxiety) is a catalyst for academic failure, low self-esteem, and an elevated suicide rate. Doing so undiagnosed in the 50's and 60's with no educational accommodations was brutal. By the 6th … Continue reading A Youthful Matter of Life or Death
A Bugle Call to Write
The desire/need to write rises from a myriad of personal reasons. It isn’t ubiquitous, some never hear the siren’s call. For me, it was quite literally a bugle call in the Fall of 1969. The Call to Quarters had sounded and scant time was left before the forlorn sounding of Taps, the call for lights … Continue reading A Bugle Call to Write
The “Borrowed” Mercedes
It started out as a typical early September Saturday in Durham, NC back in ’66, bright and sunny, still more like summer than fall. By all rights, it should have been an uneventful day, not worth remembering at all. But as luck and a non-medicated, prototypical ADHD 15-year-old mind would have it, it became one … Continue reading The “Borrowed” Mercedes
Abandoned?
It’s been many moons since I was a 5-year old, but there are some memories, whole and fragments, that seemed to be carved in stone. Such is the case regarding my “abandonment” by my mom. Before any of my relatives get riled up and jump to the wrong conclusion, just hear the story out. The … Continue reading Abandoned?
Reflections on “When Breath Becomes air”
Reflections on “When Breath Becomes air” by Paul Kalanithi By Bob Steele December 25, 2016 I have read many books in my lifetime, likely several thousand, but this is one of the rare ones. It is a profound, beautifully written book that reached out and touched me on many levels. It triggered deep reflection about … Continue reading Reflections on “When Breath Becomes air”
