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gotta die from something II

My last post, which featured findings from a study by Professor Geneveive Briand of Johns Hopkins analyzing deaths from all causes in our year of COVID, finding that while deaths attributed to COVID were up, deaths from other causes, like cancer and heart disease, were down so in the end it was sort of aContinue reading “gotta die from something II”

gotta die from something

We’re into the 10th month of this COVID thing. Early on, I discovered the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center site https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/. For a long time, I’d check it daily with the fervor of a sports nut looking up ESPN for the scores. Not so much the last couple months, so I missed last Sunday’s, whichContinue reading “gotta die from something”

My favorite holiday

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, even if I never get any presents. So simple: fantastic food, the company of family and friends, and the enforced focus on all those things for which you can be thankful, always a much longer list than you could have imagined when you first started. We should doContinue reading “My favorite holiday”

walkies

Kathy and I just returned from a most enjoyable trudge up and down the hills through the Bluffs Nature Area, off Sunset on the Northwest side or Ann Arbor right by St. Thomas Catholic cemetery not far from the sewage treatment plant, highest place in town at 1,015 feet above sea level. Only 1.8 milesContinue reading “walkies”

sunshine on my shoulders kills my COVID

I got around to reading the summer issue of my University of Chicago magazine the other day. In it was a COVID article, of course. This one, entitled “Trials by fire”, describes how U of C docs have dealt with the pandemic, not just dealing with the special needs of all the patients, and figuringContinue reading “sunshine on my shoulders kills my COVID”

simplify, simplify, simplify

That’s what my friend and high school classmate wrote back when I asked her why she’d given up her laptop for a tablet. This is what I wrote back: I think Thoreau only wrote it twice, but there is something to that. If there have been any positives from COVID, it’s that it’s forced usContinue reading “simplify, simplify, simplify”

concerts

Two Wednesdays before last, my daily treat from Bandsintown (https://www.bandsintown.com/) included a collection of video clips of several rock icons from my day performing on the Ed Sullivan show https://bestclassicbands.com/ed-sullivan-rock-classics-2-11-18/.   I got around to watching them the Friday following – wow – and it got me to thinking of another great thing we’ve lost toContinue reading “concerts”

My beautiful wife loves Michigan

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, entering the football season that had not yet begun with the Minnesota game. I blew right past the Gophers and focused on State. Three games in, it’s not looking so good for our Wolverines. But, my beautiful wife still loves Michigan!) It started pretty early. Kathy’s motherContinue reading “My beautiful wife loves Michigan”

I like being old

“See here how everythingLead up to this dayAnd it’s just like any other dayThat’s ever beenSun going up and thenThe sun going downShine through my windowAnd my friends they come around” – from Black Peter. Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. First performed by the Dead December 4, 1969 at Fillmore West. Performed 342 times thereafter. Continue reading “I like being old”

on Harbal

My wife and I have lived in this 1958 3500 square foot brick ranch for over 35 years. We’re perched high atop the Defiance moraine on a little cul-de-sac nestled between Broadway and Plymouth overlooking northwest Ann Arbor. We see the sun set from our deck every day it’s not cloudy. We share the streetContinue reading “on Harbal”