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From Stonehenge to Manhattanhenge: 5,000 Years of Looking West at Sunset

As I stood on a Midtown Manhattan street corner one evening, I noticed an unusual gathering. Hundreds of people had assembled, staring intently toward the horizon. They stood shoulder to shoulder, phones held high, faces illuminated by a golden glow. Some appeared reverent. Others seemed excited. A few looked as if they were witnessing a religious miracle.

In a sense, they were.

The event was Manhattanhenge, the twice-yearly phenomenon when the setting sun aligns perfectly with Manhattan’s street grid. As the sun descended between the skyscrapers, the crowd collectively gasped, photographed, videotaped, and otherwise documented the event from every conceivable angle.

Watching them, I couldn’t help wondering: Have we really evolved all that much from our ancestors?

For thousands of years, human beings have worshipped the sun. Ancient Egyptians revered Ra, the sun god who sailed across the heavens each day. The Incas worshipped Inti and built elaborate ceremonies around the solar cycle. The Maya designed temples and pyramids that aligned with celestial events. Across Europe, Stonehenge was constructed with astonishing precision to mark the solstices.

The sun was not merely a source of light. It was life itself. It determined harvests, seasons, migrations, and survival. Entire civilizations oriented themselves around its movements.

Fast forward to twenty-first-century Manhattan.

The sun no longer determines whether our crops survive. Most New Yorkers couldn’t identify a wheat field if it appeared in Times Square. Yet twice each year, thousands leave their offices, interrupt phone calls, postpone dinner reservations, and gather in the middle of traffic to witness the setting sun.

The difference is that ancient priests carried staffs while modern pilgrims carry iPhones.

The Maya climbed temple stairs to observe the heavens. New Yorkers climb out of the subway at 42nd Street.

Stonehenge required decades of labor. Manhattanhenge required an 1811 city planning commission and a lot of real estate developers.

Ancient observers carefully recorded celestial events on stone tablets. Modern observers upload them to Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook before the sun has even disappeared below the horizon.

One suspects that if a Mayan astronomer suddenly appeared in Midtown during Manhattanhenge, he would immediately recognize what was happening. He might be confused by the yoga pants, food-delivery bicycles, and Starbucks cups, but he would understand the crowd.

“Ah,” he would say. “These people have gathered to honor the sun.”

“Not exactly,” we would reply. “We’re creating content.”

The more I thought about it, the more Manhattanhenge seemed less like an astronomical event and more like a reminder of something deeply human. We are drawn to moments that make us feel connected to something larger than ourselves. The sun setting between Manhattan’s towers transforms ordinary streets into cathedrals. Glass office buildings become modern standing stones. Traffic lanes become ceremonial pathways.

For a few brief minutes, nobody is looking at stock prices, political polls, text messages, or emails. Everyone is looking in the same direction.

That may be the most remarkable part.

In a city famous for individual ambition, millions of people pursuing millions of different goals suddenly stop and share a common experience. They are united by a celestial event that their ancestors would have instantly understood.

Of course, there are differences.

The ancient Maya occasionally practiced human sacrifice.

Modern Manhattanites merely sacrifice battery life.

The priests of Stonehenge probably didn’t spend fifteen minutes trying to find the perfect filter.

And while Incan worshippers undoubtedly hoped for a successful harvest, today’s participants mostly hope their photographs will get more likes than their friends’ photographs.

Yet beneath the humor lies a serious truth.

Human beings have always sought meaning in the sky. We have always paused when nature offers us a moment of beauty. We have always gathered together to witness extraordinary alignments between heaven and earth.

The temples have changed.

The rituals have changed.

The technology has certainly changed.

But the impulse remains remarkably familiar.

Five thousand years after our ancestors stood before stone circles, pyramids, and sun temples, we still gather at sunset.

Only now we do it in Midtown Manhattan, wearing sneakers, holding smartphones, and hoping for good Wi-Fi.

Perhaps that is what Manhattanhenge really teaches us: beneath all our technology, sophistication, and urban complexity, there is still a small part of every human being that wants to stop, look toward the horizon, and worship the sun.

Or at least get a really good picture of it.

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Why I Would Make an Excellent Coxswain

An open application to Georgetown Rowing, submitted from a highly qualified bench near the Potomac

There comes a time in every retired physician’s life when he must ask himself the big questions:

Have I contributed enough to society?
Have I learned enough about the human condition?
Can I still yell at young people in a constructive manner while sitting down?

That last question, I believe, points me toward my next great calling: coxswain.

For the uninitiated, the coxswain is the small but mighty field general of a rowing shell. While the rowers provide muscle, sweat, blisters, and the faint aroma of wet Lycra, the coxswain provides direction, rhythm, motivation, steering, and what my family would describe as “a socially sanctioned opportunity to be bossy.”

In other words: I was born for this.

I am retired, which means I possess the most important qualification of all: availability. I am also increasingly immobile, which in ordinary life might be considered a limitation. But in rowing, the coxswain is not expected to row. He sits. He observes. He commands. At last, a sport has emerged that rewards my current athletic profile.

I spend time down by the Potomac, watching Georgetown students glide across the water with youth, discipline, and suspiciously healthy knees. I admire them. They are bright, strong, and purposeful. I would like to help. More specifically, I would like to sit in the stern of their boat with a bullhorn and improve morale through a combination of nautical insight, grandfatherly encouragement, and mild cardiology-level urgency.

My recent piano studies would also make me invaluable. Rowing, like music, depends on tempo. Too fast and the boat becomes chaos. Too slow and everyone looks like they are commuting to Rosslyn. I am learning rhythm, timing, and the spiritual power of repetition. I can already envision myself chanting:

“Row, row, row… gently? No. Firmly. Together. On my count. Again. No, not like that.”

The classic song Row, Row, Row Your Boat has been criminally underused as a training tool. With enough metronomic precision, I could transform it from nursery rhyme to aquatic battle hymn. Imagine eight Georgetown athletes, blades flashing, shell surging forward, while I maintain perfect tempo like Leonard Bernstein in a life vest.

I also like bullhorns. This is not incidental. Some men collect watches. Some collect golf clubs. I appreciate amplification. A bullhorn gives the retired man what Medicare does not: projection. I could deliver crisp, actionable commands across the Potomac with the confidence of a man who has spent decades telling patients to avoid seeds, nuts, alcohol, red meat, stress, and Google.

My medical background would be a bonus. Should a rower complain of abdominal pain, I could immediately distinguish between appendicitis, gas, overtraining, and “you’re 19, keep rowing.” If someone develops blisters, I can offer empathy. If someone becomes short of breath, I can say, “Excellent, that means you are exercising.”

I would also bring maturity. Many coxswains motivate with youthful intensity. I would bring something different: historical perspective. During a race, while other boats shout “Power ten!” I might call:

“Remember the Peloponnesian War!”
“Think of Washington crossing the Delaware!”
“Imagine your tuition bill chasing you!”

That sort of thing stays with a crew.

And yes, I am still looking to earn a university letter. Some men letter in football. Some in baseball. I am proposing a new category: Distinguished Late-Life Coxswain Emeritus. I would accept a sweater, a blazer patch, or frankly even a laminated certificate. I am not proud. I am, however, very available for ceremonies.

The photograph of the rowers says it all. There they are, powerful and synchronized, cutting across the Potomac with purpose. And there I am, not pictured, standing nearby thinking: “Those boys need rhythm, wisdom, and possibly a retired gastroenterologist with a megaphone.”

So, Georgetown, consider this my formal application.

I can sit.
I can shout.
I can count to eight.
I am learning piano.
I like your students.
I own comfortable shoes.
And I promise never to confuse port and starboard more than twice per outing.

Put me in the boat.

Or at least give me a bullhorn and a letter sweater.

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What Hawkeye Taught Me About Hantavirus

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In the first two years of medical school at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, Monday nights had a ritual quality.

A group of us would gather in the medical school library to watch M*A*S*H. We laughed at Hawkeye, rolled our eyes at Frank Burns, admired Colonel Potter, and quoted Radar. But somewhere between the wisecracks and the operating room scenes, many of us were quietly learning medicine.

And not bad medicine, either.

One episode stayed with me for decades.

It involved Korean Hemorrhagic Fever — what we now recognize as a hantavirus-related illness. The episode, “Mr. and Mrs. Who?”, aired in the 1970’s. While the comic storyline involved Charles Winchester accidentally acquiring a wife during a drunken Tokyo weekend, the real medical drama centered around soldiers developing a mysterious hemorrhagic fever with renal failure.  

The physicians at the 4077th struggled with fluid management, shock, electrolyte abnormalities, and kidney failure. The disease had phases. Patients deteriorated suddenly. There was debate over hypertonic saline and rigid military directives. Nobody fully understood the illness.

That uncertainty was historically accurate.

During the Korean War, thousands of United Nations soldiers developed what was then called Korean Hemorrhagic Fever. The actual causative virus — Hantaan virus — was not identified until 1978, years after the war itself.  

And there I was, a medical student in Los Angeles, absorbing it through television.

What made M*A*S*H different from most medical dramas was its obsession with getting the medicine right. The show’s legendary medical consultant, Dr. Walter Dishell, insisted on realism in the scripts and operating room details. The medicine mattered. The diseases mattered. The patients mattered.

Even the setting mattered to us at USC.

Our lecture hall carried the name of Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood studio mogul. There was always an odd but unmistakable connection between medicine and storytelling at USC. Hollywood was only a few miles away, and somehow that intersection produced a generation of physicians who learned not just from textbooks and rounds, but from carefully crafted television.

Years later, the lesson resurfaced.

In 1993 came the Sin Nombre hantavirus outbreak in the American Southwest — the “Four Corners” outbreak. Young healthy people suddenly developed pulmonary failure after exposure to aerosolized rodent droppings. Physicians scrambled to identify a mysterious pathogen. The disease entered the public consciousness almost overnight.

And somewhere in the back of my mind was Hawkeye Pierce talking about hemorrhagic fever.

Then recently came the widely publicized death of the wife of Gene Hackman, reportedly linked to hantavirus exposure, followed by news reports involving suspected hantavirus illness on a cruise ship. Suddenly the terminology sounded familiar again — not because I had recently reviewed infectious disease journals, but because of a television episode I watched over fifty years ago in medical school.

That is the extraordinary thing about narrative medicine and visual memory.

I may not remember every Krebs cycle intermediate from 1975, but I vividly remember Hawkeye and B.J. debating fluid management for hemorrhagic fever patients.

Television, at its best, creates durable memory pathways. It attaches medical facts to emotion, humor, fear, and character. We remember stories better than lists.

Medical education now talks endlessly about “multimedia learning.” We had it already. It simply starred Alan Alda.

And perhaps that is why Alan Alda deserves a little credit from an entire generation of physicians.

He made medicine human.

He made curiosity admirable.

And without realizing it, he may have helped many of us remember a rare infectious disease long enough to recognize it decades later when it re-entered the news cycle.

Not bad for a Monday night in the library.

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The Cookie I Chased for 70 Years: Found Me On My Birthday

This post is rewritten to reflect recent developments:

Some people chase fame, fortune, or the fountain of youth. Me? I chase black-and-white cookies. Not just a black-and-white cookie—I’m talking about the black-and-white cookie. This is less a hobby and more a lifelong pursuit—part nostalgia, part stubbornness, and part refusal to accept mediocrity in baked goods.

My journey has taken me from childhood bakeries that no longer exist…to modern-day pilgrimages that occasionally end in heartbreak. (More on that Florida debacle later.) But every once in a while, just when the trail seems cold, something unexpected happens.

Like this year—on my 73rd birthday—when the cookie found me.

A Love Letter to the Black-and-White Cookie

Let’s get one thing straight: the black-and-white cookie is not a cookie. It’s a cake wearing a cookie costume.

Soft. Slightly domed. Tender but not flimsy. And topped with that signature half-and-half glaze—vanilla on one side, chocolate on the other—like a dessert that couldn’t decide and wisely chose both.

The icing is where greatness lives or dies. It should be thin, almost fondant-like—not a slab of sugary drywall. The vanilla side should be clean and bright. The chocolate side should taste like cocoa, not compromise.

No sprinkles. No fillings. No nonsense.

This is not dessert innovation. This is dessert perfection.

For me, it’s more than food. It’s memory. It’s New York. It’s childhood. It’s a time when bakeries smelled like sugar and promise, and one cookie could make your entire day.

A Bite of History

The black-and-white cookie has been around for over a century, which already gives it more staying power than most things on the internet.

Often associated with New York, its origins are debated. Some credit Bavarian immigrants. Others point to Glaser’s Bake Shop, which opened in 1902 and helped define the form before closing in 2018—an event that should have warranted citywide mourning.

Screenshot

Jewish bakeries and delis carried the torch, turning the black-and-white into an icon. Even Seinfeld weighed in, famously declaring it a symbol of harmony.

I’ll leave the philosophy to Jerry. I’m here for the icing.

The One That Got Away: Adventurers Inn

Every obsession has its origin story. Mine involves a now-defunct amusement park in Queens: Adventurers Inn.

They didn’t just serve black-and-whites. They served a double-decker version.

Two layers. Twice the cake. Twice the icing. A structural achievement that should have required an engineering permit.

As a kid, I stared at it like it was edible mythology. And then—like all great childhood institutions—Adventurers Inn disappeared, taking my beloved double-decker with it.

I’ve been chasing that ghost ever since.

The Delray Beach Debacle

Fast forward to recent times. I hear whispers of greatness at Boy’s Farmers Market. Naturally, I go.

The bakery counter was five people deep. Not a line—a contact sport.

Elbows were deployed. Orders barked. Boxes clutched like lottery winnings.

I hovered. I strategized. I briefly considered a pick-and-roll maneuver.

But in the end? I walked away. No cookie. Just dignity… and a growing suspicion that the best black-and-white in Florida was five feet away and completely inaccessible without shoulder pads.

Still, if it’s that crowded, they’re doing something right.

The Birthday Surprise (When the Cookie Found Me)

And then—just when I least expected it—came my 73rd birthday.

No bakery pilgrimage. No crowded counters. No tactical maneuvering required.

Instead, my son’s mother-in-law—clearly a woman of exceptional judgment—had scoured the internet, found a recipe, and showed up with a batch of homemade black-and-white cookies.

What I walked into was less a kitchen and more a cookie workshop in full swing.

Rows of freshly baked cookies. Bowls of icing. Spatulas in motion. It had the feel of a family-run bakery—only warmer, livelier, and a lot more fun.

And then came the grandkids.

My granddaughter and grandson stepped right into the process with complete enthusiasm. They helped spread icing, sampled along the way, and brought a level of joy and energy that no professional bakery could ever replicate.

The cookies took on a little personality—some with a bit more chocolate, some with a bit more vanilla—but each one felt like it had a story behind it.

It was exactly how baking should be.

The cookies themselves? Genuinely excellent. Soft, balanced, with icing that captured the spirit of a true black-and-white.

But more importantly, they had something no bakery can reliably produce:

They had occasion.

The Search Continues

So here I am. Still chasing the perfect black-and-white cookie.

Maybe it’s in a hidden bakery.
Maybe it’s in a deli that hasn’t changed since 1975.
Maybe somewhere, somehow, a double-decker is waiting for its comeback tour.

But now I know something I didn’t before.

Sometimes the best version isn’t the one you chase.

Sometimes it’s the one that shows up—on your 73rd birthday—made in a busy kitchen, shared with family, and brought to life by a couple of enthusiastic young assistants who understand, instinctively, that dessert is supposed to be fun.

And frankly, they’re absolutely right.

The quest continues.

But for one day at least?

I caught it.

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The Mascot Hunger Games: Why Every City Needs Its Own “Running Presidents”

Let’s be honest: baseball is a game of statistics, tradition, and three-hour-long stretches where absolutely nothing happens except a grown man adjusting his gloves. That’s why we have mascots. Specifically, the Washington Nationals hit gold with the Racing Presidents. Seeing a giant-headed Abraham Lincoln accidentally clothesline George Washington is the peak of American athleticism.
But why should D.C. have all the fun? It’s time we localized the chaos. If we’re going to have 10-foot-tall foam caricatures sprinting for our entertainment, they should at least reflect the specific neuroses and local flavor of their home cities.
Here is my proposal for the “Mascot Races of the Future.”

New York City (Mets/Yankees): The Great Slice Scurry

Forget the subway race; let’s talk about what actually fuels the city.

  • The Competitors: Classic Pepperoni, Fancy Margherita, The Dollar Slice, and The Pineapple (The Villain).
  • The Twist: To win, they have to navigate a series of obstacles including a slow-walking tourist and a puddle of “mysterious liquid.” If the Pineapple slice wins, the stadium is legally required to boo for ten minutes.

Baltimore (Orioles): The Battle of the Bards

Baltimore is a city of history and very specific bragging rights.

  • The Competitors: Francis Scott Key vs. The Guy Who Wrote “America the Beautiful” (Katharine Lee Bates).
  • The Twist: Since Key wrote the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore Harbor, he gets a home-field advantage—but Bates gets to throw “Purple Mountain Majesties” (purple dodgeballs) at him from the infield.

Milwaukee (Brewers): The Hangover Heat

We know they have the Sausages, but let’s get corporate.

  • The Competitors: Giant foam cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life, and Schlitz.
  • The Twist: Halfway through the race, they have to stop and eat a bratwurst. The first one to finish without their foam lid popping off wins a “Best Utility Player” award and a nap.

San Francisco (Giants): The Tech Disruptors

The race starts at the center-field wall and ends at the Silicon Valley bank account.

  • The Competitors: The AI Startup Guy, The E-Scooter, and A Rent-Controlled Studio Apartment.
  • The Twist: The Apartment doesn’t actually move, yet somehow its value increases by 15% every inning. The AI Startup Guy claims he’s winning, but he’s actually just hallucinating the finish line.

Philadelphia (Phillies): The “Everything is a Projectile” Derby

Let’s be real, Philly fans don’t want a race; they want a spectacle.

  • The Competitors: A Giant Cheesesteak (Whiz Wit), A Parking Cone, and Ben Franklin.
  • The Twist: There is no finish line. The mascots just run until the fans start throwing batteries. Ben Franklin wins by default because he’s the only one wearing a kite for protection.

Pro Tip: If you ever find yourself at a game where a giant condiment is winning a race, bet on the Mustard. Ketchup always gets complacent in the final stretch.

Which city do you think would have the most chaotic race—and more importantly, what local food item would you put in a footrace against a historical figure?

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Organized Minds, Glorious Nerds

My grandson is at it again. He’s ticking off African nations — all 54 of them — with the focused serenity of a monk counting prayer beads.

Yesterday it was the counties of Texas. Before that, American presidents in reverse chronological order, which he performed at dinner with the calm confidence of a kid who has seen things. He lives in Washington, D.C., which I suspect is less a geographic choice than a spiritual one: he wants to be near the material.

I recognize him completely. I am him, sixty years earlier, haunting the mailbox in October waiting for the Information Please Almanac to arrive. When it did, I did not read it so much as inhale it — population densities, Olympic records, the gross national products of countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a globe.

Meanwhile, the World Book Encyclopedia sat on the shelf like a cathedral, and I was its most devoted worshipper. Volume P alone — Population, Planets, Presidents, Portugal — could sustain me through a dull February weekend.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who make lists… and those who pretend they don’t.

I come from a proud lineage of list-makers. Not casual, jot-it-on-a-napkin types—but the kind who would alphabetize their anxieties if given a quiet afternoon and a sharpened pencil.

My grandson, at the ripe old age of four, has already joined the guild. He ticks off countries in Africa like a seasoned diplomat, names U.S. states with the confidence of a campaign manager, and is working his way through presidents as if he has a clearance badge to the White House.

The List Gene

I blame genetics. Or perhaps nostalgia.

In my day—back when hair was longer and attention spans were shorter—we didn’t have YouTube serenading us with “Top 50 Rivers of Europe” set to a catchy beat.

We had the annual unveiling of the Information Please Almanac, which arrived with all the fanfare of a new iPhone launch, minus the line outside. And then there was the majestic World Book Encyclopedia—a 26-volume monument to curiosity and back strain.

You didn’t “Google” things. You hunted them. You earned them. You cross-referenced Mongolia like it owed you money—and if you wanted an update, you waited a year and hoped Mongolia hadn’t moved.

Surgical Precision, Trivial Pursuits

There is nothing quite like standing in an operating room, where a vascular surgeon is calmly repairing an aortic aneurysm while casually listing the ten tallest buildings in the world. (“Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower… suction please…”)

Meanwhile, a family practice colleague—clearly underutilized—recites the La Marseillaise backwards. Not clinically useful, but impressive enough to make you question your own hobbies.

We were supposed to be saving lives. Instead, we were mentally indexing them.

The Ken Jennings Ideal

And then there is the patron saint of us all: Ken Jennings. Seventy-four consecutive Jeopardy! victories. A human being who appeared to have simply agreed to remember everything, on the off chance someone would someday ask. When Ken Jennings walked onto that stage, he wasn’t showing off. He was reporting for duty.

Every one of us who ever memorized the order of the planets, the presidents, the periodic table, or the airports of Europe by IATA code contains a small Ken Jennings. A tiny, extremely well-organized Ken, sitting in the library of our hippocampus, cross-referencing, updating, waiting for his moment. We are all, in our hearts, training for Jeopardy!.

I suspect this is, at its core, a love of order in a disordered world. The universe tends toward entropy; the list-maker pushes back. You cannot control geopolitics, but you can, by God, know all the landlocked countries of Africa in alphabetical order.

You cannot cure mortality, but you can tell me the ten longest rivers on every continent, and for a moment — just a moment — the world is knowable, mappable, tamed.

The Sports Lists (Where It Gets Serious)

This is where list-making graduates from hobby to religion.

The Mickey Mantle File

Every self-respecting sports fan of a certain vintage has this memorized:

  • 536 home runs
  • 3 MVP awards
  • Triple Crown (1956)
  • Switch-hitter with tape-measure power from both sides
  • Knees held together by willpower and clubhouse tape

We didn’t just admire Mantle—we archived him.

The Los Angeles Lakers Pantheon

You can start an argument at any dinner table with this one:

  • Magic Johnson – ran Showtime like a jazz conductor who never missed a beat
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – the skyhook: medicine’s answer to the unstoppable procedure
  • Kobe Bryant – relentless, surgical, occasionally terrifying
  • Shaquille O’Neal – less a player, more a controlled demolition
  • Jerry West – the logo, before branding departments existed

Ranking them is like choosing your favorite child—except everyone is louder about it.

The Tiger Woods Ledger

This one borders on scripture:

  • 15 major championships
  • The “Tiger Slam” (holding all four majors at once, 2000–2001)
  • Masters wins: 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2019
  • U.S. Opens: 2000, 2002, 2008
  • The Open Championship: 2000, 2005, 2006
  • PGA Championships: 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007

If you play golf, you don’t just watch Tiger—you audit him.

The Modern Evolution: Musical Lists

Today’s children have upgraded tools.

My grandson doesn’t flip through encyclopedias—he watches YouTube videos where animated characters sing the capitals of Europe in a rhythm that gets stuck in your head for three days. I now know more about Slovenia than I ever intended, entirely due to a chorus line of cartoon goats.

It’s hard to compete with that. My generation had mnemonics. His has choreography—and better production values.

Why Lists Matter (or at Least Why We Think They Do)

There’s something deeply satisfying about a list:

  • It imposes order on chaos
  • It gives the illusion of mastery
  • It turns the infinite into something you can check off before dinner

Lists are how we convince ourselves we understand the world. If we can name all 50 states, surely we’ve conquered geography. If we know the presidents in order, history must be under control.

The Family Tradition Continues

And so I watch the next generation.

My grandson, sitting on the floor, confidently announcing: “I know all the countries in Africa.”

I don’t correct him—not because I’m generous, but because he’s usually right. Sudan and South Sudan? That update didn’t make it into my edition of the encyclopedia.

It’s a humbling experience to be outmatched in geopolitical awareness by someone who still needs help tying his shoes.

Final Entry

Somewhere along the way, I traded my encyclopedias for Google and my almanacs for apps. But the instinct remains.

To categorize. To rank. To recall.

And occasionally, to wonder—usually late at night—whether I could still name the ten tallest buildings in the world if someone handed me a scalpel.

Probably not.

But give me a list… and I’ll give it a shot.

A PARTIAL TAXONOMY OF LIST ENTHUSIASTS
1. The Completionist — Cannot rest until every African country, every Texas county, every U.S. president is accounted for. Sleep is optional. Gaps are not.
2. The Performance Lister — Deploys their lists at precisely the right moment. Dinner parties. Operating rooms. Elevators.
3. The Almanac Archaeologist — Keeps a 1965 World Almanac specifically because the 1965 data is still technically accurate for historical purposes.
4. The Trivia Athlete — Trains daily. Has a vision board. Watches Jeopardy! in the way most people watch playoff games.
5. The Backwards Reciter — A rare and specialized subspecies. Requires no further explanation.
6. The YouTube Mnemonist — Has learned 195 countries through earworm. Is unstoppable at parties.

WHAT WE KNOW FOR CERTAIN
1. Lists are not a quirk. They are a calling.
2. The almanac was the internet before the internet, and it had better binding.
3. YouTube trivia songs are a legitimate branch of classical education.
4. Any surgeon who can name the world’s tallest skyscrapers while operating has simply found an efficient use of bandwidth.
5. The Marseillaise backwards is probably not useful. It is nonetheless impressive.
6. A grandson who ticks off countries is not wasting time. He is building a mind.
7. Ken Jennings is proof that there is a God, and that God rewards those who pay attention.

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The Colonoscope in the Park

Seven years into retirement, I assumed I had successfully left gastroenterology behind.

Apparently my subconscious did not get the memo.

The dream began normally enough. I was back in an endoscopy suite performing a colonoscopy—something I had done thousands of times over the course of my career. The setting felt completely authentic: the soft hum of equipment, the glowing monitor, the familiar choreography of scope, suction, insufflation, and gentle navigation through the turns of the colon.

Then I saw it.

A polyp.

Even in my dream I was pleased. Muscle memory kicked in immediately. The snare went out, the polyp was captured cleanly, and I dropped it neatly into the retrieval basket. A textbook polypectomy.

At that point I looked up.

I was no longer in the endoscopy center.

I was standing in a park.

The colonoscope was still in my hands. The basket still contained the polyp. But the patient had completely vanished, as had the endoscopy suite. No nurse, no monitor, no stretcher—just me, the scope, and what appeared to be a perfectly pleasant public park.

Dream logic, as usual, provided no explanation.

I remember thinking: Well, this is unusual.

The next scene shifted again. Now I was back in the endoscopy center, but the situation had somehow become worse. The patient had apparently gotten up and left. The room was empty. I was standing there holding a colonoscope and a specimen basket with a polyp that seemed to belong to no one.

And I was thinking: What exactly am I supposed to do now?

Do I call pathology?

Do I track down the patient?

Do I go back to the park and see if he’s still there?

This was the precise moment I woke up.

Later that same day I spoke with a 90-year-old retired radiologist. He practiced for decades and read thousands upon thousands of studies during his career.

He told me something interesting.

He still dreams about radiology.

Not just occasionally—frequently. In his dreams he’s interpreting films, attending departmental meetings, or planning new hospital ventures. He hasn’t practiced in years, but the machinery of the profession keeps running somewhere in the back of his mind.

Apparently the professional brain never fully powers down.

The whole thing reminded me of another type of dream that many of us have had since our student days.

The classic academic nightmare.

You’re suddenly sitting in a final exam. The room is silent. The test is handed out. And then you realize—with a sinking feeling—that you never attended the class all semester. You don’t recognize the material. You don’t know the subject. You may not even know what course you’re taking.

Yet somehow you are expected to pass the final.

For decades that dream would occasionally pop up in my sleep. It’s the brain’s way of replaying the anxiety of responsibility long after the actual responsibility has disappeared.

My colonoscopy-in-the-park dream felt like the medical version of that exam nightmare.

Somewhere in my subconscious I am still responsible for the polyp.

Medicine leaves deep grooves in the brain. When you spend forty years making decisions, solving problems, and being responsible for other people’s outcomes, those patterns become part of the architecture of the mind.

You may retire.

But the brain occasionally clocks back in.

Sometimes that means interpreting radiology films at age ninety. Sometimes it means taking an exam for a class you never attended.

And sometimes it means standing in a park holding a colonoscope and a very nicely retrieved polyp—wondering where the patient went.

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The Lost Language of the Chart-Toppers: Why Bad Bunny Frustrates a Monolingual America

If you scroll through the comments of any major music publication today, you’ll find a recurring grievance: “Why is the biggest artist in the world singing in a language I don’t understand?” Bad Bunny’s refusal to “crossover” into English has become a cultural flashpoint. To some, it’s a triumphant display of Latino pride; to others, it’s a barrier to entry that feels alienating. But if we look back sixty or seventy years, the American listener was actually far more comfortable with a polyglot playlist than we are today.

What changed? It might be that we’ve lost the “shared trauma” that once forced us to look outward.

When the World Was on the Radio

In the 1950s and 60s, Americans didn’t just tolerate foreign-language hits; they celebrated them. Consider the landscape:

• Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” (1958): An Italian ballad that spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the first-ever Grammy for Record of the Year.

• Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki” (1963): A Japanese torch song that reached #1 despite the fact that most listeners had no idea it was actually a melancholy poem about walking to keep from crying.

• Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”: A traditional Mexican huapango that became an indelible part of the early rock-and-roll DNA.

Even Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera,” while primarily English, leaned into its Spanish title as a universal mantra. Back then, the American ear was conditioned to find beauty in the melody, even when the vocabulary remained a mystery.

The Military Connection: A Global Perspective

There is a compelling argument that this mid-century musical tolerance was forged in the fires of World War II. After a global conflict that left 60 million dead, the world was irrevocably interconnected.

Millions of young American GIs were deployed to Europe and the Pacific. They weren’t just tourists; they were young people living in German villages, Italian cities, and Japanese occupied territories. They ate the food, heard the radio, and brought those sounds home in their kit bags.

This created a “globalized” generation. They had seen the wreckage of isolationism and, through sheer military exposure, developed a cultural elasticity. To a veteran who had spent two years in Naples, an Italian ballad on the radio didn’t feel like a “foreign intrusion”—it felt like a memory.

The Modern Divide: No Shared Experience

Contrast that with the environment that greets Bad Bunny today. Today’s United States lacks that unifying, outward-facing experience. We are more “connected” via the internet, but more “siloed” in our consumption.

• Algorithmic Bubbles: We only hear what we already like.

• The Lack of National Service: There is no longer a massive, cross-cultural “melting pot” experience like the draft to force diverse groups of Americans to live and work together.

• Language as Politics: In the current climate, Spanish isn’t just a language; it’s often treated as a political statement, making Bad Bunny’s success feel like a “takeover” to those who prefer an English-only status quo.

Final Thoughts

The criticism of Bad Bunny often stems from a feeling of being “left out.” But if the 1950s taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need to know the lyrics to feel the soul of a song.

Perhaps the reason we struggle with foreign-language hits today isn’t a lack of talent on the artist’s part, but a lack of curiosity on ours. We no longer have the grim necessity of global war to force us to see the world; now, we have to choose to look.

⭐ The True Foreign-Language #1 Hits in the U.S.

These were fully or predominantly non-English and went all the way:

  • Volare – Domenico Modugno (Italian) – 1958
  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto (Japanese) – 1963
  • Dominique – The Singing Nun (French) – 1963

That’s it — only three in the entire two decades reached #1 in their original languages.

📊 By Language

🇮🇹 Italian

  • Volare – Modugno
  • Al Di Là – Pericoli
  • O Dio Mio – Annette
  • Quando, Quando, Quando – Pat Boone

➡ Italian was the dominant foreign language on U.S. radio in the late ’50s/early ’60s (Sanremo effect + Italian-American audience).

🇪🇸 Spanish

  • La Bamba – Ritchie Valens
  • Guantanamera – The Sandpipers
  • El Watusi – Ray Barretto

➡ Spanish entered via rock & Latin dance crazes.

🇫🇷 French

  • Dominique – The Singing Nun
    ➡ The most unlikely #1 of the rock era.

🇯🇵 Japanese

  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto
    ➡ Still the only Japanese-language U.S. Hot 100 #1 in history.
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Boy and Man’s Best Friend: A Life Measured in Dogs

If you want to understand the chapters of my life, don’t look at schools, jobs, or addresses. Look at the dogs.

The Early Years: Borrowed Dogs and Forbidden Longings

The first dog I truly knew wasn’t ours. She lived next door in Clearview, Queens, a mixed-breed named Tippy, grandfathered into a housing development where dogs were technically verboten. Tippy was gentle, cautious, and deeply unimpressed by fireworks. July 4th was not her holiday. While the rest of America celebrated independence, Tippy practiced anxiety.

My cousins in Flushing had Cocoa, a cocker spaniel with a flair for drama. Cocoa pranced through northern Queens as if the sidewalks were runways and she had somewhere important to be. I adored her.

Naturally, my brother and I begged for a dog of our own.

Miraculously, our parents caved.

Domino: The Dog Who Made Childhood Complete

Ignoring housing rules and common sense, we stopped at Bide-A-Wee, the nonprofit rescue, and came home with a black-and-white mutt. My father named her Domino, a name so perfect it felt inevitable.

Childhood immediately improved.

Domino tore across our 700-square-foot apartment like a Hall of Fame running back, executing sharp cuts between furniture and humans alike. She went on long walks with us and short sprints through the living room. My mother fell completely under her spell, cooking special meals—eggs and ground beef—clearly superior to anything the rest of us were eating.

Domino knew dog people on sight. My Aunt Ardyth—veteran of Cocoa and later dogs—was her favorite human. When Ardyth walked in, Domino’s tail wagged so fast it seemed capable of generating lift.

When Domino gnawed a hole straight through the carpet, my mother patched it and hid the evidence from my father, knowing full well that discovery could mean deportation for the dog. This was marital diplomacy at its finest.

Too soon, Domino died of canine distemper at just two and a half years old. Our apartment felt impossibly quiet. Childhood took its first hard lesson in loss.

The Supporting Cast: Dogs of Relatives and Young Adulthood

Other dogs followed—belonging to family, but partially ours in spirit.

My brother’s German Shorthaired Pointer would stand rigid in the kitchen, pointing at appliances as if the refrigerator contained an adult quail.  He shared Domino’s fondness for carpeting.

Then there was Bea, the bandana-wearing beagle of my college apartment in Buffalo, where I lived with roommates who had signed on for higher education—not wildlife management.

Bea was compact, cheerful, and deeply committed to her work as an urban hunter. She lived in an apartment that technically housed students but functioned as a rodent surveillance unit. Every so often, Bea would surprise us by proudly producing a mouse, tail wagging, eyes bright, as if to say, You’re welcome

She wore her bandana like a union badge. Bea was not embarrassed. We were.

Adult Dogs: Bigger Houses, Bigger Damage

Adulthood brought Scooter, a golden retriever—affectionate, loyal, and refreshingly uninterested in carpets. Unfortunately, Scooter was interested in the pool’s intake piping, which she chewed through, creating a backyard flood best described as Lake Erie-adjacent.

Still, she was a good girl.

Millie: Ten Pounds of Chaos and One Near International Incident

Then came Millie, a Jack Russell terrier with the confidence of a Great Dane and the impulse control of a caffeinated squirrel.

Millie didn’t run—she launched. She bounded up stairs two at a time, sometimes skipping entire steps, occasionally achieving what appeared to be temporary flight. She believed every object was hers, including—memorably—my son’s shin guards, which she stole just before a soccer game.

When panic erupted, Millie eventually returned, head lowered, shin guards in mouth, wearing the unmistakable expression of someone who had won but decided not to press her advantage.

Her greatest performance, however, occurred one summer when my boys were away at camp in Northern California. Millie escaped.

What followed was a harrowing, cardio-intensive chase up the steep inclines of Yorba Linda, with Millie turning the entire neighborhood into her personal agility course. She would allow me to approach within inches—close enough to believe—then bolt a quarter mile uphill, glancing back just long enough to ensure I was still participating.

This went on for hours.

Eventually, exhaustion—mine, not hers—ended the game. Millie finally allowed herself to be apprehended, panting happily, grinning like an athlete who had just set a personal record.

At that exact moment, the boys called.

Sensing that the truth might be… destabilizing, I calmly lied.

“All is well,” I said.

Millie, freshly captured and still vibrating with joy, sat beside me, beaming.

It was parenting, dog ownership, and crisis management rolled into one.

The Next Generation

Now my sons have dogs of their own—Gainy and Charlie—who carry on the proud tradition of hijinks, companionship, and unconditional joy. Watching them with my grandchildren feels like closing a long, happy loop.

Epilogue

Dogs have been our sentries, our comedians, our therapists, and occasionally our demolition crews. They’ve shared our apartments, our houses, our mistakes, and our best days.

For that companionship—and for the early humans and canines who figured out this remarkable partnership—I remain deeply grateful.

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I Went Back to my Kindergarten Class of 1958– Here is What I Told Them

Show and Tell, 67 Years Later

I arrive in Whitestone, Queens, in the soft, milk-glass light of 1958. The air smells faintly of chalk and floor wax. The sidewalks are narrower, the cars longer, the future quieter. I push open the classroom door and there you all are—knees scabbed, collars starched, haircuts obedient to gravity and mothers. Mrs. LaPenna stands watch, ruler nearby, smile doing most of the work.

You look up at me as if I’m a substitute teacher who took a wrong turn off the Whitestone Expressway. I tell you I’m one of you—just borrowed from a later inning of the same game. I’m here on a time pass from 2025, and I don’t have long.

I start with the easy truths.

“First,” I say, “you’re growing up in a good moment. The Dodgers have left Brooklyn, which hurts, but the Yankees are still a juggernaut. Elvis is on the radio. Ike is in the White House. Polio is on the ropes. Milk comes in bottles and your parents still believe tomorrow will be better because it usually is.”

A few of you grin. One kid in the front row adjusts his bow tie like it’s armor.

“Second,” I say, “hold onto this room. You won’t know it now, but classrooms like this—blackboard dust, wooden desks, a teacher who knows your full name—are where the country learns how to argue without fighting. You’ll need that skill.”

I tell you what’s coming, gently.

“There will be a man on television named Kennedy who makes politics look young. There will be marches where people insist—out loud—that America live up to its own handwriting. There will be a war you’ll see every night at dinner. Some of you will go. Some of you will protest. Most of you will just try to make sense of it all.”

You fidget. Big words for small shoes.

“So here’s the advice,” I say, and I lean in because advice should never be shouted.

“Be curious longer than is comfortable. Read beyond the assignment. Learn how things work—your body, a carburetor, a balance sheet, a sentence. When the world tells you to pick a side fast, slow down. Speed makes noise; understanding makes progress.”

I point to the windows. “Neighborhoods change. Whitestone will still be here, but it will look different. That’s not a loss—it’s a relay. You’ll carry what matters and pass it on.”

I pause, then add the part I didn’t know in kindergarten.

“You will fail at things you’re good at and succeed at things you never planned. That’s not hypocrisy—it’s growth. Be kind to yourself when the map gets smudged.”

Someone asks about the future—always the future.

I smile. “In 2025, you’ll carry a small rectangle in your pocket that knows almost everything. It will be miraculous and distracting. Use it to learn, not to disappear. And when it tells you the world is on fire, remember this room. Remember how a group of five-year-olds once sat still long enough to listen.”

Mrs. LaPenna clears her throat—the bell is coming.

“One more thing,” I say. “Call your parents more than you think you should. Thank teachers while you can. Save a photograph like this and look at it when you’re unsure who you are. You’re in here. So is everyone you’ll ever be.”

The bell rings. Chairs scrape. Time tightens.

As I step back into 2025, the chalk dust follows me for a second, then settles. I carry it with me—the proof that before the headlines and the hindsight, before the decades did what decades do, there was a room in Whitestone where the future sat cross-legged and waited its turn to speak.