BANKING ON MEMORY
I spent the last two days trying to recall a word I don't use often but had encountered several times recently, a not uncommon word, one syllable, easy enough, but still it eludes me. I can picture the thing itself but still the word does not come forward. I realize that this kind of blocked recall happens more often now that I am into a late life decade.
Lentils. Was the word.
Death and Taxes
When I was eleven years old I was taken to the hospital for an elective appendectomy. It was my introduction to the American healthcare system.Last week I filed my 2019 income tax forms, paying times what Trump paid in 2017, thus interacting yet again with our tax system.Between these two events many decades of living have intervened. Inevitably my involvement with these systems will terminate with death.
Your Brain on Social Isolation
Social isolation is human despair. We evolved down from primates who were all blessed and sometimes cursed with group membership. Simply put: no (hu)man is an island.The strangest, and some ways most disturbing, example of social isolation I ever experienced was as a senior officer on a Coast Guard ship were I was sent for a very brief tour. It was during the Vietnam war and I was serving in the Public Health Service. A requirement of that service was to do a 3-week junket providing medical coverage for a small sector, in the North Atlantic —the Sea of Labrador—as part of America's commitment to NATO.