catch me if you can…help me if I’m white My cat is dying. That has nothing to do with con men or racial injustice, but everything to do with spending more time than usual on the couch while tending to a sick kitty and distracting myself from the inevitable. In…

I wasn’t prepared to have my pet be treated like Osama ‘fin’ Laden. (Originally published by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on December 28, 2003) Like many college students who fly home for the holidays, I submit to endure the latest airport safeguards in the name of homeland security. A lot…

Let me tell you a story. Up until this point I’ve kept an outwardly sunny, positive outlook on surgical recovery. I think it’s key to healing well and fast. It’s not a façade, but it’s also not truthful to tell you that everything about recovery has been easy. I had…

And we’re back. Literally. It’s not lost on me that the last time I wrote a public post was while in recovery from my first spine surgery over two years ago. I love to write, I love to reflect, and I love to note observations about our crazy world and…

Do you remember the Walt Whitman poem “I Hear America Singing?” (I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear/Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else/Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.) I remember singing a 10-part choral arrangement of Walt’s ditty in high…

What you need to know first is that flying runs in my family. In fact, I am the sole member of my immediate family that hasn’t made their living between 10 and 40,000 feet in the air at one point or another. Dad was a pilot, Mom was a flight…

And Maybe That’s Okay. First things first. Before we discuss the pulse of our major metropolis, let us take a moment to mourn the 175,000 actual lives lost to Coronavirus across our nation, 32,451 of which are New Yorkers. And for those of us who have been lucky enough to…