Category: reflections

  • Camping in Our Basement: Week 2

    Camping in Our Basement: Week 2

    It’s week 2 of camping out in our basement because our wood floors underwent sanding and resealing. Today, the workers finished up and the floors look great. But we still can’t move back upstairs because that would ruin the finish just applied on the floors. The final coat went on last Friday. It’ll be this…

  • Camping In Our Basement

    Camping In Our Basement

    We’ve been camping in our basement since yesterday. We’re having our upper level wood floors sanded and resealed. This has led to a new sense of togetherness for me and Sena. We had to get all the furniture off the floor. We were lucky enough to be able to find places to move them. We…

  • Frank and His Stump Grinder

    Frank and His Stump Grinder

    This is a follow-up post on Frank and his stump grinder estimate from last week (“Stumped”). By the way, he was the only stump grinder to return my call about getting a quote for the job. The name of his business is Corridor Stump Grinding (CSG) and the web page says it all: “We Remove…

  • Retirement and Loss of the Crusade

    Retirement and Loss of the Crusade

    I recently read an article about Maintenance of Psychiatry (MOC) written by Dr. Henry A. Nasrallah, MD and published this month in Current Psychiatry. The title is “Revamp the maintenance of certification program.” It brought back memories of my crusade to do the same thing in past years. I lost my connection to that crusade…

  • Jenny Lind Porter Scott: In Remembrance

    Jenny Lind Porter Scott: In Remembrance

    I met Dr. Jenny Lind Porter Scott, one of my favorite teachers, in the mid-1970s during my first two years of college at what was then called Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University or HTU). It’s one of America’s historically black colleges. I didn’t graduate from there, instead transferring credit to Iowa State University and taking…

  • Stumped

    Stumped

    Ever since the derecho last month, we’ve been stumped by stumps—tree stumps. It has been a lesson in the value of persistence. The tree in our front yard got knocked over almost right at ground level. I cut it up with a 20-inch hand saw. But the stump has me stumped so far. You can…

  • Move Up to the Power Pole Saw

    Move Up to the Power Pole Saw

    One of our favorite movies is “Up,” a charmer about an old guy named Carl whose wife Ellie always urged him to move up and onward to new adventures. In some ways, me and Sena are like Carl and Ellie. There’s a lot more to that movie than a house which travels under balloon power…

  • Shout Out for Big Act of Kindness

    Shout Out for Big Act of Kindness

    Today Sena and I want to make a shout out for a big act of kindness. Back in August, the derecho blew down a maple tree in our front yard, which also led to a concern about the tree right next to our house, which was a lilac. We cut both down to stumps with…

  • Bird Poop Luck and Boston Duck Tours

    Bird Poop Luck and Boston Duck Tours

    Last night Sena and I watched a YouTube video walking tour of Boston, Massachusetts. It brought back memories of a trip we made there about 16 years ago. The main reason for the journey was a November teaching conference (sponsored by the Academy of C-L Psychiatry, back then called the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine) on…

  • Hanging In There

    Hanging In There

    It has been a while since my last post. I’m hanging in there although sometimes it’s difficult to stay optimistic. I’m reminded of the Survivor Tree, the Callery Pear in New York City. You can easily google the story about this tree which somehow survived at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attack on America in…