When I was a very junior neurosurgical resident in France, I always thanked my lucky stars I had not overused coffee. Mme. M., who ran the cafe below my apartment throughout the first part of my studies, which were mostly classroom, had an Italian espresso machine and little demitasses (half-cups) of potent brew — so potent that I could not consume more than one in the morning. Arabica, fragrant, and aromatic, it was a true joy.
After I moved closer to the hospital center, I heard for the first time the expression “pump yourself full of coffee.” (se pomper pleine de cafe) It was foul tasting stuff, consumed in an infinity of Styrofoam cups, and strong — really strong. There were rumors that it came from the same “common market supplier” as the wine, which was supposed to also be from a a mixture of common market (it had not yet become the European Union) countries. All the food was free, as we were government employees.
Nobody ever figured out where the coffee had come from.
There was an open bar 24/7, about as well outfitted as Mme. M’s. I was afraid to be in the same room with it. I am delighted to report that I never saw anyone use it on an on-call night.
This is the place I could access a small bed — iron tubes for headboard and rails, mattress probably stiffened with starch. The joke, which may well have been true, was that it was Napoleonic non-issue, meant for a barracks.
After the first night I lay upon it sleepless, answering a beeper that whenever it rang told me to call the operator and they would tell me who to call, my then-young back was killing me and I was fighting tears. Read more on Save Lives — Let Doctors Sleep!…
Filed under medical errors by on Aug 26th, 2011. Comment. 
“Nations make their histories to fit their illusions” — Walter Lippmann (twice Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist).
I remember years ago taking care of a Vietnam war veteran who told me, “what everybody says is wrong. There ARE atheists in foxholes and they is me.”
To be a member of the wrong religion is a very dangerous condition, as many Muslim-Americans have found out in this new millennium. Read more on Thank God I’m Not An Atheist…
Filed under News, politics, Religion by on Jun 8th, 2011. Comment.
I am old enough to remember having briefly met then-senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, at a synagogue breakfast in my hometown – a suburb of Boston. He had donned a skull cap, and shook hands with my parents as well as with me. I talked little in those days, which is a testament to how young I was. I could stand unaided, and the senator shook hands with me.
Bill Clinton courts the Jewish vote
Years later, his was one of the first presidential elections I tried to follow. People were very worried that he was Catholic. In our neighborhood, anybody I knew who was not Jewish seemed to be Catholic. It had never bothered me. I remember seeing on television some news-reporting-human asked him about his need to be obedient on the Pope, being a Catholic and all, and how that could limit his ability to serve. He gave what I thought then was a good answer, about not being obliged to do anything the Pope happened to say, but saying his service to the people of the United States came first. I had thought that a good answer at the time.
My parents had all kinds of concerns, as did many Jews of their generation, even though they habitually voted Democrat. Read more on Whose Beliefs Do You Follow? Your Own!…
Filed under Religion by on May 12th, 2011. Comment.
FINE — so I am home spending a quiet Christmas eve at home with my dear husband, and reliving the time in extreme youth — would you believe before I started school, meaning not over four or so — when I told my parents that this Santa was a rip off, because there were people in all these suits at the couple of different stores they shopped, nobody could fly like that, lots of folks had no chimneys. Also there was nothing on our roof to designate us as Jewish but he wouldn’t come and whatever.
Santa and Rudolph Are Heroes of Mythic Proportions
Often in our house, especially when my grandmother of blessed memory was alive, several things, including Santa, were simply dismissed as things necessary to “goyim,” (non-Jews) and therefore somehow for the inferior or those who were somehow mentally or socially challenged.
One self-styled parenting expert on the net has raised the question whether the Santa Claus myth is good or bad for kids.
Filed under Holidays by on Dec 25th, 2010. Comment.
A few weeks ago I was flipping the channels on TV and discovered something disturbing. In fact, I think it took me this long to cool down before I could write about it. Apparently, I discovered “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” quite accidentally. I’ve heard that if a preacher in the pulpit talks about politics, his or her church can lose its tax-exempt status. This always seemed to me to be a way to separate church and state.
Considering that most of the Founding Fathers, as is well documented elsewhere, were mostly Deists or Unitarians and some were on a road barrelling toward atheism, as well as the large number of people who came to the colonies for religious freedom, this has always made cosmic sense. Apparently, people were given free rein to talk about politics in the pulpit from 1788 (ratification of the U.S. Constitution) until the Johnson Amendment in 1954, which a bunch of Christian lawyers feel is unconstitutional, because it is an abridgment of Freedom of Speech. Read more on Religion And Politics Shouldn’t Mix…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Oct 19th, 2010. Comment.
There was only one patient in the waiting room. “Shalom, Dr. Goldstein,” was what I heard. I answered in the only possible way. “Shalom.” It means “peace” in Hebrew, and is a traditional greeting.
She was excited to have a doctor with a name like “Goldstein” who might actually be Jewish. She was a Jew from the east coast who had landed in the semi-rural place where I found myself; no synagogue, no Jewish community, “only a couple of Messianics.” These are Jews who consider themselves “completed” having “added” Christ on to their belief system. I am not, and won’t be, one of them. This woman wanted a “Jewish word” so badly that she took my hand. She also wanted at least three prescriptions, one of which would be for Xanax (alprazolam), the most addictive of the benzodiazepines. She had run out several weeks ago. No wonder she looked so nervous. I told her I used to be a cantorial soloist — someone filling the role of a cantor (which is a formal title of the temple choir leader, the singer of liturgical solos and who also leads the congregation in prayer). So, yeah, I really was Jewish. Read more on Shalom In The Waiting Room…
Filed under Religion by on Sep 27th, 2010. Comment.
I actually worked in Palmdale, California, once upon a time. I remember my final day on the job, my husband took a photo of me leaving the front door of the county mental health clinic, looking thoroughly jubilant.
Why is this woman smiling? Let’s just say, “Relief.” In all of Los Angeles County it is the place where one can live cheapest. It is the farthest settlement from the metropolis. In fact it’s actually closer to Bakersfield, which is in the next county. Not quite rural, but one of the several patients who had left the congestion of downtown Los Angeles for Palmdale told me that at least you could breathe the air in Palmdale. It was also a place where exchanging sexual favors for rent in a trailer park was not uncommon. It was also a place where local TV pickings were slim enough that I was actually on television. Not as a physician, mind you, but singing the songs of Edith Piaf. In those days before “American Idol” they broadcast from the local karaoke bar on a weekly basis. The night I was there, the special guest star was the fellow who played harmonica on the hit record “Moon River” forty years earlier and had been a bit-part actor in movies such as “The Wild One” with Marlon Brando. He had fallen on hard times – he dressed like a homeless person and used a length of rope as a belt for his pants.
That’s my impression of Palmdale. Read more on Cults Are Still Around, So Watch Out…
Filed under End Of Life, News, Religion by on Sep 22nd, 2010. Comment.
September 11, 2010 has come and gone and – surprisingly — no new war started nor has the planet been annihilated. It really looked touch-and-go there for the previous week.
We have probably already forgotten about the events of this day, nine years after the most cataclysmic terrorist attack in US history. We are mainly thankful that nothing like it has happened since.
By now, I suppose those of us who still believe in print media are using the September 11th, 2010 edition of our favorite newspaper to line the bottoms of bird cages or litter boxes or whatever. It seemed that this year, we were very, very close to something very, very bad happening. We were literally on the brink of internecine warfare that could easily have destroyed the earth. Read more on Surviving 9-11 — Again!…
Filed under News, Religion by on Sep 20th, 2010. Comment.
I won’t even begin to start a list of the towns and cities, as it would take me too long to just remember them — much less write them down.
And with each place I’ve lived, I eventually start thinking that it is the most corrupt place I’ve ever seen — until I move to the next place.
It’s not news any more, really. From the White House through the Legislature and the state governors down to the mayors and city council and even the dog catchers (do places really have elections for dog catchers?) power corrupts and money flows to the corrupt politician. Read more on Political Ugliness and More About That Mosque…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Sep 6th, 2010. Comment.
I often observe — mostly with wonder and astonishment — that the US must be the most religious country in the world. Religion is not as strictly enforced as in, say, the Islamic countries. But it has permeated so many facets of our life, and so many people (according to actual polls) believe in God or a deity, the afterlife or heaven, punishment or hell and such parallel beliefs as angels among us, that we are constantly bombarded by religion or a reaction against religion as we go about our daily business. Speaking of which — while travelling recently, I read the USA Today which I found either at the hotel front desk or on some communal table in front of the breakfast bar.
That is where I found an editorial about religion, purporting to explain why religion was necessary. I mean, the author — Oliver Thomas — thinks religion is as essential to life as oxygen and water. I was raised in the Jewish religion and spent a lot of time in temple, as my father was organist and choir director all of his adult life. The only socializing my family did was at the temple, with breakfasts and holy day observances and things like that. I have always believed in a deity myself, not specifically in the way that the organized religions present it (as if to three-year-olds) and still have my own private rituals of prayer and meditation. That being said, this editorial disturbed me. Instead of ripping up the paper or making any attempt to answer it, I put it somewhere on the floor of the car hoping it would go away, but knowing that I would eventually have to deal with it in some manner. A lot of people seem to think that everything is in the world to support what they already believe. Thomas, the author, is way far out — past the people who, for example, read Ford advertisements after they buy a Ford to prove to themselves that they have made the right decision. Thomas, a member of the USA Today board of contributors (I guess you have to be able to write enough to fill their quota of space) and author of a book titled “10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can’t Because He Needs the Job)” writes an editorial that asks an intriguing question, but does not answer that question or prove what he contends. Read more on America: The Most Religious Country In The World…
Filed under Religion by on Sep 1st, 2010. Comment.