The Garden State
terrasig | July 4, 2010I just walked outside my little dead-end neighborhood of 17 or so houses, almost exactly the number of my childhood neighborhood in northern New Jersey.
The houses and lots are a little bigger since money goes further in North Carolina. And yeah, sure, a state professor's salary is a bit better than that of a printing press mechanic or registered nurse in the 1970s.
But there is a huge hole in my 4th of July experience.
There are no kids riding on their bicycles with American flags taped to their handle bars, ever the risk of poking out one's eye - something that could probably get a parent…
terrasig | March 11, 2010This is a repost of my reflections on my father who passed away 13 years today. It took me 12 years to write the following eulogy and remembrance. While quite personal, I posted it here last year because I felt that my experiences were quite universal, shared by the families of the ten or twenty million alcoholics in the US and the hundreds of millions worldwide. Moreover, I wanted to provide a face for my colleagues who work in the area of substance abuse and a reminder for my clinical colleagues of the people behind those they may dismiss as drunks and junkies.
In becoming one my most most…
terrasig | November 20, 2009
Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97.
Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills 2 million a year worldwide. The concept of using drug combinations to increase individual drug potency and slow the emergence of resistance is now a mainstay of therapeutic approaches for cancer, HIV, and other infectious diseases.
Gellene…
terrasig | September 11, 2009[Here is why I will always remember. This was posted here originally on 11 September 2006.]
Let me tell you about John Michael Griffin, Jr.
Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine.
Late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. John's endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist.
Griff died an engineer and hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers five [eight] years ago today.
We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and…
terrasig | April 28, 2009UPDATE (Wed 29 April): As friends and family of the Urbanos and Kanes have been arriving here via web searches, I wanted to provide a compendium of individual obituaries and plans for visitation and funeral.
Visitation for all will be at Thiele-Reid Family Funeral Home, 585 Belgrove Drive, Kearny, NJ 07032, (201) 991-1031 on Thursday, 30 April, and Friday, 1 May from 2:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Funeral liturgy will be offered for all, at St. Stephen's Church, in Kearny, on Saturday, 2 May, at 11:00 a.m.
The Urbanos will then be laid to rest at St. Nicholas Cemetery in Lodi; the Kanes will be laid…
terrasig | March 15, 2009I am truly humbled by reader response to my Thursday post on the 12th anniversary of my father's death. What began as a simple journaling exercise interspersed with some great photos provided by my sister has become one of my most highly-read and most-commented posts.
I don't want to comment too much lest I take away what this post has meant to me and others. But for background, this is something that I had intended to write for the 10th anniversary of Dad's passing. However, I had only been with ScienceBlogs for a few months and wasn't yet in a position to write so frankly and personally…
terrasig | March 12, 2009Today marks 12 years since you died.
Well, it might have been today, possibly yesterday, I hope not too many days ago.
You see, you died alone in your apartment you rented from your sister downstairs. Yet no one checked on you as your mail accumulated Monday and Tuesday. One of your drinking buddies from the Disabled American Veterans post told me proudly at your funeral that he probably had with you your last beer that Saturday night. So, maybe it was the 8th or 9th?
When I think back, though, I believe you died some eight years earlier, just after your 50th birthday party. For your…
terrasig | April 18, 2008A group e-mail showed up today from some of my boyhood friends and fellow Springsteen worshipers on the sad passing of Danny Federici yesterday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC from melanoma. He was only 58.
Here's my open letter and response to the thread:
Hey-a Boyce,
Not too much more to add here except my sadness on the passing of a great musician and, as O'D sez, one of the crucial background guys who added so much to the sound without needing the spotlight. I watched the killer video of Danny from March 20th in Indy doing the accordion on "Sandy" - he looked fabulous…
terrasig | February 17, 2008Yes, this is a science-related post, just a little off topic. We don't talk about religion much around these parts because my Catholic school upbringing and torture by nuns gives me PTSD. But I grew up in a place where your family was either Catholic or Jewish - equal-opportunity guilt.
So it is with painful nostalgia that I received the following missive from my mechanical engineer/grease monkey Catholic school classmate - (hey Tom, get off the computer; shouldn't you be in church anyway?). Enjoy!:
Subject: Church Bulletins
They're Back! Church Bulletins: God bless the church ladies who…
terrasig | August 3, 2006Thanks to all for coming over and sharing your MTV memories earlier this week. Our SciBling editor and cat-herder, Katherine, came across with a very vivid list of great memories and Orac was able to bitch about being ever so slightly older than me. Then, Karmen surprised me by intimating that cable TV actually existed in Colorado in 1981, at least at her Grandma's house.
I said I was going to tell you some of my general recollections of MTV, but I have very specific memories of this very week 25 years ago thanks to my personal archivist, number one fan, and all-around keeper of my life…