I hope you slept well last night. When you woke up this morning, history had been made on biblical proportions.  It is zero hour. While you were off in dreamland, as the rain washed over the East Coast, in the quiet blanket of night, dozens of very special refrigerated trucks made off along the interstates. They departed the previous day from Portage, Michigan: legions of them, fanning out to destinations near and far across America, carrying their valuable and historic cargo, en route to over 600 hospitals and clinics. Right now, as you read this, the COVID vaccinations are hitting the arms of its first American recipients. One year ago, nobody outside of a biology lab had ever heard of the novel coronavirus, a.k.a. COVID-19. Now it is standard household vocabulary. In December 2019 we knew nothing. Social distancing was something you did when somebody pissed you off. You occasionally viewed people donning face masks on TV news-  Japanese massing in their commuter railways at...

Daddy worked like a mule mining Pike County coal He fucked up his back and couldn't work anymore He said "One of these days you'll get out of these hills Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills."                         -Tyler Childers Boxer was the workhorse in George Orwell's Animal Farm . His answer to every problem, every setback, was `I will work harder!' which he had adopted as his personal motto.  He labored his entire life for his cause like no other animal on the farm, only to collapse in exhaustion and be ultimately sold to a slaughterhouse, so the ruling pigs could buy themselves a case of whiskey. I will work harder, for myself and my loved ones- not for some pointless politician's pointless vision. I clawed my back from unemployment, loss, and alcoholic oblivion, and found not one but THREE E.R. jobs I love. I work my ass off at all of them, taking on far more hours than any emergency physician s...

  But when you cross over... time stops. When I came back... I knew... all the things I could see were real. Heaven and hell were right here. Behind every wall, every window. The world behind the world, and we're smack in the middle. -John Constantine You have one. Whether you choose to admit it, or even acknowledge it, your innerworld exists- the reality behind the reality. Your shadow place. The secret refuge from the routine, from the daily grind, where your not-so-guilty pleasures explode and unencumbered fantasies materialize. Much like your outerworld, the landscape there brims with desire and temptation, with one profound difference- in that place, your special place, it is all up close, tangible, and infinitely more vivid; there are zero encumbrances preventing your engagement. Held in check by societal norms, there you are not. Pinned down by regulation, authority, social decorum, or the demands of others, there you are not. So when you find that opportune moment, evening...

  1978 Dad took me to the third game of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. The Dodgers were up in the series, leading two  games to nothing, and game three was a “must win” for the Bronx Bombers. The Yanks were behind  1-0 in a third inning and the Dodgers had runners on first and second with one out. We were sitting in the second tier, third base line. I was staring directly at my favorite player, Greg Nettles, the third baseman. Thurman Munson was standing behind home plate shouting something to him. Lucky for us, Ron Guidry was on the mound.  One pitch later Steve Garvey hit a rocket down the third-base line which Netttles speared, fired to Roy White at second base who in turn threw to first to complete the double play. Inning over, and the Yanks were out of the jam. I remember turning to dad. “If Greg had not made that play it  might have meant  multiple more runs for the Dodgers, and the Yanks would’ve been a deep hole, and if they lose the game they ...

My son Toby and I have been digging for diamond ore. It lies deep- very deep, secretly embedded in the depths of the digital world; you won't come across any in those upper layers Minecraft’s green surface. Finding any at all requires some heavy mining- down many, many levels past the dirt, the cobblestone, the granite. Beyond the deposits of coal and clusters of redstone. I even passed up some gold ore to get to it. When I had finally made it into the bowels of the underworld, it still took a lot of work and dumb luck with my simulated iron pickaxe to reach some of those rare grey cubes glittering with nuggets of sky blue diamond ore. I get there, mark the site, and notify Toby about my discovery. He had tasked me with finding diamond ore for a special purpose. He joins me sublevel and assists in the harvest to bring the bounty to his wizard's crafting table. He can then create all kinds of special implements endowed with magical spells. Every Wednesday, we meet online in this...

Four years ago today was Implosion Day . My absolute worst, my bottom. The day by which all other "bad" days in my life will forever be compared. Nothing since has come close, and although the future is by definition uncertain, I truly doubt any day will. By some quirk of the calendar, Election Day 2016 happened to be November 8th, the second Tuesday of the month. I know this, because it was also my first night spent in residential treatment. I am going to take you back to that fateful evening. Oblivious to any events outside my own skull, I remember being surprised to look up at the TV in the residents' lounge in the Big House to see CNN's John King standing beside a giant map of the U.S., states colored in red, blue, and yellow: After the meeting, I wandered into the residents’ lounge, a large, hospitable room with a sitting area, two computer stations, a refrigerator stocked with high-calorie “nutritious”snacks, a juice fountain, cushy oversized furniture, and a h...

  The following came in yesterday through Netgalley.com, a literary trade industry website where bibliophiles are provided advanced review copies of new books and provide unbiased professional-grade assessments. This is not your feel-good “friends & family” ego-stroking love fest. It’s pretty hardcore, and the reviewers pull no punches:   "Ballad of a Sober Man" was so riveting that I had to finish it within hours of picking it up. Yes, Dr Remy may be a board-certified E.R. physician, but he is also a prolific storyteller. This man can write! I HIGHLY recommend this book to those who are in recovery, and/or to those who have a loved one or friend dealing with alcoholism. It's wonderful to see the humanity behind the disease. This gist of this memoir is that Dr. Joe finds himself, at age 49, "morally bankrupt" and "deep in spiritual debt." In the first few chapters, we meet him as he's "voluntold" into a psychiatric hospital to detox f...