My first abortive foray into learning Spanish was in elementary school. “He’s falling! He’s falling! Ai! He fell!” (Se cae! Se cae! Ai! Se cayo!) is all I remember from many years of instruction. Never one to give up easily, I am picking up the trail something over half a
Mrs. K’s narrative is overwhelmingly sad. Her son is underperforming in school. Her son won’t listen to her. Her son is smoking pot. Her son doesn’t come home when he says he will. Her son would rather do anything than do what she tells him to do. Her son’s friends
It has been said that if you are a conservative under 30 you have no heart, but that if you are a liberal over 30 you have no head. I’m not sure I agree, but I have noticed a certain shift toward curmudgeondom as I march inevitably toward double digit
Training is a marathon, not a sprint. Education is a marathon, not a sprint. Painting is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing is a marathon not a sprint. Is anything a sprint? With the possible exception of actual sprinting, maybe not. Maybe every endeavor is a marathon. Even sprinting is
“Everyone gets a trophy” remains controversial as does “everyone gets an A.” As a middle school math teacher, I was all about “everyone gets an A.” if only my students had cooperated. If everyone learned what x was then everyone could get an A and I could get on with
As I may have mentioned—repeatedly? constantly? obsessively?—in any number of these 600-somehting columns, I love running. Or, to be more accurate, I love having run. Nothing feels better, to this creaky 65-year-old, than getting the worst of the day over with at oh dark hundred. And now that I have
“Why do we have to wait three days for the lab reports to come back? Do you know long it takes to find a parking space in the lot, how far we have to walk? The hospital food is terrible. Visiting hours are ridiculous.” The attending doctor wants to talk
The Klingons have been transported aboard the Enterprise. Tension is high, mistrust ubiquitous, hostilities imminent. An alien life force that feeds on intense emotion has replaced futuristic weapons with bloodier antecedents. Knives, swords, and spears abound. The explicitly wounded are avenged, but in ways unknown to even 25th century science,
Is mentioning that the stars of the most recent Spider-Man film introduce the movie by saying, “no spoilers” in itself a spoiler of some kind, a “meta-spoiler” perhaps? If so, read no further. Because I’m going to mention another aspect of the cinematic experience. Hopefully, the 20 million people who
A young doctor I know loses the key to his apartment with staggering consistency—several times a month. He academic abilities are prodigious: he was graduated near the top of his class in medical school and can recite differential diagnoses more effectively than I can remember the names of my own
Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2024 | Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC | (305) 978-8917 | [email protected]
