On Getting Old They were all old people, sitting in a circle in a traditional living room furnished many decades ago. My wife, our infant daughter, and I had been invited for “Vaspa”, tea and a light meal. My adopted grandfather and grandmother, their cousins and in-laws, were reminiscing about old times. All were suffering from the illnesses of old age: arthritis, cancer, early stages of dementia, the usual litany of very real complaints. And life with its normal or unusual trials had left its scars. It was a reflective, somber group. Grandfather had had a stroke, and his participation in the conversation was limited, hardly above a whisper, and…

Grateful for Parkinson’s? Yesterday I decided that I would be grateful for my Parkinson’s Disease. It was like turning a page in novel, or more like starting the next chapter. PD is one of those maladies that creeps up in the story, quite unnoticed, until an unexpected fall on the sidewalk, or a missed pass on the sports field, that draws ones’ startled attention. You think, how can that have happened? I’ve done it with skill a thousand times, and now look what happened. And then memories of other events come into place in the puzzle, and someone says casually, have you seen the doctor about this? And the doctor’s…

In Honor of My Friends My neighbor and friend did me the honor of dropping in and sharing a couple of hotdogs from his barbeque. We enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes while we compared notes on the joy of friendships. For sixty years a very close friend, John, and I have shared new discoveries, compared notes on the joy of raising of our children as well as professional wisdom, and personal struggles. The depth of the friendship has been proven of late as we supported each other through the troubled experiences of our beloved wives’ terminal illnesses and their quiet passing. My friend, Bob and I, both…

Uganda Travels We were in the beautiful, forested foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in South Ruwenzori, Uganda, near the Congolese border. Out of telephone or radio contact with the rest of the world, we were a team doing Organizational Development work in hospitals operated by North American mission groups and staffed by a few expats, but run mostly by keen national Ugandan trained professionals. The ambulance, a rudimentary van driven by a fine young Ugandan, was our means of transportation, and it had taken us on a long journey through some of the most fertile, always green, beautiful countryside we could have imagined. We had done workshops in…

In Gratitude for Dyslexia It isn’t a gift. It’s an inherited brain function that cannot be treated. With good management and early intervention one can learn to stickhandle around it so that it is not experienced as a lifelong handicap. I am not grateful for it, but ingratitude is not useful and only adds to the many complexities. So I am stuck with the limitations but have developed creative, ingenious strategies to slip around the learning difficulties. I can then be selectively successful, like telling stories instead of giving learned lectures on theoretical issues. Spelling? Spellcheck is a stroke of magic. Dyslexia has made me develop creative impulsivity in solving…

On Getting Old They were all old people, sitting in a circle in a traditional living room furnished many decades ago. My wife, our infant daughter, and I had been invited for “Vaspa”, tea and a light meal. My adopted grandfather and grandmother, their cousins and in-laws, were reminiscing about old times. All were suffering from the illnesses of old age: arthritis, cancer, early stages of dementia, the usual litany of very real complaints. And life with its normal or unusual trials had left its scars. It was a reflective, somber group. Grandfather had had a stroke, and his participation in the conversation was limited, hardly above a whisper, and…

Grateful for Parkinson’s? Yesterday I decided that I would be grateful for my Parkinson’s Disease. It was like turning a page in novel, or more like starting the next chapter. PD is one of those maladies that creeps up in the story, quite unnoticed, until an unexpected fall on the sidewalk, or a missed pass on the sports field, that draws ones’ startled attention. You think, how can that have happened? I’ve done it with skill a thousand times, and now look what happened. And then memories of other events come into place in the puzzle, and someone says casually, have you seen the doctor about this? And the doctor’s…

In Honor of My Friends My neighbor and friend did me the honor of dropping in and sharing a couple of hotdogs from his barbeque. We enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes while we compared notes on the joy of friendships. For sixty years a very close friend, John, and I have shared new discoveries, compared notes on the joy of raising of our children as well as professional wisdom, and personal struggles. The depth of the friendship has been proven of late as we supported each other through the troubled experiences of our beloved wives’ terminal illnesses and their quiet passing. My friend, Bob and I, both…

Uganda Travels We were in the beautiful, forested foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in South Ruwenzori, Uganda, near the Congolese border. Out of telephone or radio contact with the rest of the world, we were a team doing Organizational Development work in hospitals operated by North American mission groups and staffed by a few expats, but run mostly by keen national Ugandan trained professionals. The ambulance, a rudimentary van driven by a fine young Ugandan, was our means of transportation, and it had taken us on a long journey through some of the most fertile, always green, beautiful countryside we could have imagined. We had done workshops in…

In Gratitude for Dyslexia It isn’t a gift. It’s an inherited brain function that cannot be treated. With good management and early intervention one can learn to stickhandle around it so that it is not experienced as a lifelong handicap. I am not grateful for it, but ingratitude is not useful and only adds to the many complexities. So I am stuck with the limitations but have developed creative, ingenious strategies to slip around the learning difficulties. I can then be selectively successful, like telling stories instead of giving learned lectures on theoretical issues. Spelling? Spellcheck is a stroke of magic. Dyslexia has made me develop creative impulsivity in solving…

On Getting Old They were all old people, sitting in a circle in a traditional living room furnished many decades ago. My wife, our infant daughter, and I had been invited for “Vaspa”, tea and a light meal. My adopted grandfather and grandmother, their cousins and in-laws, were reminiscing about old times. All were suffering from the illnesses of old age: arthritis, cancer, early stages of dementia, the usual litany of very real complaints. And life with its normal or unusual trials had left its scars. It was a reflective, somber group. Grandfather had had a stroke, and his participation in the conversation was limited, hardly above a whisper, and…

Grateful for Parkinson’s? Yesterday I decided that I would be grateful for my Parkinson’s Disease. It was like turning a page in novel, or more like starting the next chapter. PD is one of those maladies that creeps up in the story, quite unnoticed, until an unexpected fall on the sidewalk, or a missed pass on the sports field, that draws ones’ startled attention. You think, how can that have happened? I’ve done it with skill a thousand times, and now look what happened. And then memories of other events come into place in the puzzle, and someone says casually, have you seen the doctor about this? And the doctor’s…

In Honor of My Friends My neighbor and friend did me the honor of dropping in and sharing a couple of hotdogs from his barbeque. We enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes while we compared notes on the joy of friendships. For sixty years a very close friend, John, and I have shared new discoveries, compared notes on the joy of raising of our children as well as professional wisdom, and personal struggles. The depth of the friendship has been proven of late as we supported each other through the troubled experiences of our beloved wives’ terminal illnesses and their quiet passing. My friend, Bob and I, both…

Uganda Travels We were in the beautiful, forested foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in South Ruwenzori, Uganda, near the Congolese border. Out of telephone or radio contact with the rest of the world, we were a team doing Organizational Development work in hospitals operated by North American mission groups and staffed by a few expats, but run mostly by keen national Ugandan trained professionals. The ambulance, a rudimentary van driven by a fine young Ugandan, was our means of transportation, and it had taken us on a long journey through some of the most fertile, always green, beautiful countryside we could have imagined. We had done workshops in…

In Gratitude for Dyslexia It isn’t a gift. It’s an inherited brain function that cannot be treated. With good management and early intervention one can learn to stickhandle around it so that it is not experienced as a lifelong handicap. I am not grateful for it, but ingratitude is not useful and only adds to the many complexities. So I am stuck with the limitations but have developed creative, ingenious strategies to slip around the learning difficulties. I can then be selectively successful, like telling stories instead of giving learned lectures on theoretical issues. Spelling? Spellcheck is a stroke of magic. Dyslexia has made me develop creative impulsivity in solving…

On Getting Old They were all old people, sitting in a circle in a traditional living room furnished many decades ago. My wife, our infant daughter, and I had been invited for “Vaspa”, tea and a light meal. My adopted grandfather and grandmother, their cousins and in-laws, were reminiscing about old times. All were suffering from the illnesses of old age: arthritis, cancer, early stages of dementia, the usual litany of very real complaints. And life with its normal or unusual trials had left its scars. It was a reflective, somber group. Grandfather had had a stroke, and his participation in the conversation was limited, hardly above a whisper, and…

Grateful for Parkinson’s? Yesterday I decided that I would be grateful for my Parkinson’s Disease. It was like turning a page in novel, or more like starting the next chapter. PD is one of those maladies that creeps up in the story, quite unnoticed, until an unexpected fall on the sidewalk, or a missed pass on the sports field, that draws ones’ startled attention. You think, how can that have happened? I’ve done it with skill a thousand times, and now look what happened. And then memories of other events come into place in the puzzle, and someone says casually, have you seen the doctor about this? And the doctor’s…

In Honor of My Friends My neighbor and friend did me the honor of dropping in and sharing a couple of hotdogs from his barbeque. We enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes while we compared notes on the joy of friendships. For sixty years a very close friend, John, and I have shared new discoveries, compared notes on the joy of raising of our children as well as professional wisdom, and personal struggles. The depth of the friendship has been proven of late as we supported each other through the troubled experiences of our beloved wives’ terminal illnesses and their quiet passing. My friend, Bob and I, both…

Uganda Travels We were in the beautiful, forested foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in South Ruwenzori, Uganda, near the Congolese border. Out of telephone or radio contact with the rest of the world, we were a team doing Organizational Development work in hospitals operated by North American mission groups and staffed by a few expats, but run mostly by keen national Ugandan trained professionals. The ambulance, a rudimentary van driven by a fine young Ugandan, was our means of transportation, and it had taken us on a long journey through some of the most fertile, always green, beautiful countryside we could have imagined. We had done workshops in…

In Gratitude for Dyslexia It isn’t a gift. It’s an inherited brain function that cannot be treated. With good management and early intervention one can learn to stickhandle around it so that it is not experienced as a lifelong handicap. I am not grateful for it, but ingratitude is not useful and only adds to the many complexities. So I am stuck with the limitations but have developed creative, ingenious strategies to slip around the learning difficulties. I can then be selectively successful, like telling stories instead of giving learned lectures on theoretical issues. Spelling? Spellcheck is a stroke of magic. Dyslexia has made me develop creative impulsivity in solving…

On Getting Old They were all old people, sitting in a circle in a traditional living room furnished many decades ago. My wife, our infant daughter, and I had been invited for “Vaspa”, tea and a light meal. My adopted grandfather and grandmother, their cousins and in-laws, were reminiscing about old times. All were suffering from the illnesses of old age: arthritis, cancer, early stages of dementia, the usual litany of very real complaints. And life with its normal or unusual trials had left its scars. It was a reflective, somber group. Grandfather had had a stroke, and his participation in the conversation was limited, hardly above a whisper, and…

Grateful for Parkinson’s? Yesterday I decided that I would be grateful for my Parkinson’s Disease. It was like turning a page in novel, or more like starting the next chapter. PD is one of those maladies that creeps up in the story, quite unnoticed, until an unexpected fall on the sidewalk, or a missed pass on the sports field, that draws ones’ startled attention. You think, how can that have happened? I’ve done it with skill a thousand times, and now look what happened. And then memories of other events come into place in the puzzle, and someone says casually, have you seen the doctor about this? And the doctor’s…

In Honor of My Friends My neighbor and friend did me the honor of dropping in and sharing a couple of hotdogs from his barbeque. We enjoyed each other’s company for a few minutes while we compared notes on the joy of friendships. For sixty years a very close friend, John, and I have shared new discoveries, compared notes on the joy of raising of our children as well as professional wisdom, and personal struggles. The depth of the friendship has been proven of late as we supported each other through the troubled experiences of our beloved wives’ terminal illnesses and their quiet passing. My friend, Bob and I, both…

Uganda Travels We were in the beautiful, forested foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in South Ruwenzori, Uganda, near the Congolese border. Out of telephone or radio contact with the rest of the world, we were a team doing Organizational Development work in hospitals operated by North American mission groups and staffed by a few expats, but run mostly by keen national Ugandan trained professionals. The ambulance, a rudimentary van driven by a fine young Ugandan, was our means of transportation, and it had taken us on a long journey through some of the most fertile, always green, beautiful countryside we could have imagined. We had done workshops in…

In Gratitude for Dyslexia It isn’t a gift. It’s an inherited brain function that cannot be treated. With good management and early intervention one can learn to stickhandle around it so that it is not experienced as a lifelong handicap. I am not grateful for it, but ingratitude is not useful and only adds to the many complexities. So I am stuck with the limitations but have developed creative, ingenious strategies to slip around the learning difficulties. I can then be selectively successful, like telling stories instead of giving learned lectures on theoretical issues. Spelling? Spellcheck is a stroke of magic. Dyslexia has made me develop creative impulsivity in solving…