Musing of a Contemporary Pathologist

Category Art

Tchaikovsky’s Piano – a short story

My recently published short story from The MacGuffin Literary Magazine – volume 40, number 1, November 2024:     Maggie Whiteman rarely felt anxious before a concert. Now there was a definite sense of foreboding when the driver, picking her… Continue Reading →

About Christmas, my grandmother and Hillary Rodham Clinton

Christmas has always been a favorite holiday for me. When I was born, in 1939, at the end of the great depression, we lived with my maternal grandparents. My grandmother, Fannie (Feiga, originally) Levine, emigrated by herself from what was… Continue Reading →

Medicine in Literature

  The first known physician was the Egyptian Imhotep, who is thought to have been active in the years close to 2625 BCE. He was the chancellor to King Djoser, high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis and… Continue Reading →

Chanteuse: Karen Akers

I first visited Chicago in the late 1980s to attend a meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The AASLD was founded in Chicago in 1950 by Hans Popper—my teacher, then colleague and friend, who… Continue Reading →

On Listening to Mahler’s 2nd Symphony for the First Time, Again

Classical music first became important to me when I was a student at Brooklyn College in the late 1950s, although I heard music, especially opera, which my grandfather loved, from childhood. My piano lessons, of course, included compositions by Bach… Continue Reading →

Wanderer

       It has been a few years since the idea of writing an essay about Sterling Hayden first came to my mind and I began collecting articles about him. I am not sure why I felt the need to… Continue Reading →

Thunderbird – a short story

(published in the Spring 2022 issue of the literary magazine El Portal).     Thunderbird Marty lost the first love of his life to the son of the district attorney of Brooklyn. At first the family chauffeur, driving a long,… Continue Reading →

Hooked (on ice cream)

It’s a balmy late-September evening at Mount Vernon. After a particularly busy day for the retired President, crowded with meetings and tasks, including answering President Adams’ letter by providing some suggestions to calm the ongoing squabbles between Jefferson and Hamilton…. Continue Reading →

A 77-year-old short story for our time

                 For a few months, I have been part of a short-story-reading group operating under the aegis of New York City’s 92nd Street Y. Each week we read and then, via Zoom, discuss a short story. A couple of weeks… Continue Reading →

Go East, not-so-young man, go East …

     In 1837, Horace Greeley (1811-1872), then founder and editor of the fledging literary magazine The New-Yorker (not related to the modern New Yorker, established in 1925 by Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant), wrote “Fly, scatter through… Continue Reading →

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