We’re watching Hell on earth on our screens play out every day from Lviv, Mariupol and Dnipro, cities and town in Ukraine. I had never heard of any of these cities until February 24 when the Russians invaded … causing unimaginable brutality and pain perpetrated on the innocents. Imagine civilians like you and me beingContinue reading “Trauma begets trauma”
Author Archives: Richard Halpern
Something anyone can do
Even before I turned seventy I was thinking about how to live my best life, whether I might live a long, fruitful life, and whether I had any control over the matter. It was with these concerns that I picked up the book The Art of Aging by Dr. Sherwin Nulland, author of an earlierContinue reading “Something anyone can do”
The Top 10 List
The war in Ukraine with all its pain and suffering and unnecessary death and destruction has been my concern over the past month. Interest and concentration necessary to write about my little life has not been of interest. So instead of doing that I’m providing a filler for off the hook this time: April 2022Continue reading “The Top 10 List”
Just sittin’
I’ve been doing a lot of nothing during the month of February and it’s been liberating. Doing nothing, just hanging around, watching Netflix or just wasting time is not wasting time. There’s a first time for everything and for the last few weeks I’ve really enjoyed doing nothing; for me it’s been surprisingly worthwhile. It’sContinue reading “Just sittin’”
Seventy? Seventy!
When younger and later in life as a married man with two young children, deep into my career and family, I thought that when a person turned seventy years of age they had matured to a point and would share their lessons of life with their loved ones. This didn’t happen. I assumed wrong. NoContinue reading “Seventy? Seventy!”
In Awe of Authors
Medical doctors, PhDs, and authors alike are people whom I’m in awe. Anyone who can consciously slave away for thousands of hours over multiple years to create a book of any type: memoir, history, fiction, dissertation or serious treatise is remarkable. Novelist Philip Roth considered it a very good day of writing if he producedContinue reading “In Awe of Authors”
Reasons to be Cheerful
David Byrne of Talking Heads and Elon Musk of Tesla are known to be “on the Spectrum” as they each have Asperger’s syndrome. The dictionary definition of Asperger’s syndrome is one who has a developmental disability that is related to autism. Asperger’s people are characterized by higher than average intellectual ability coupled with impaired socialContinue reading “Reasons to be Cheerful”
Music to our ears
“Fun” doesn’t follow me around all that often so when in Asheville, North Carolina the day after Christmas, the jazzy, up tempo beat of the Uptown Hillbillies was quite literally music to my ears. My wife and I paid the cover charge, showed proof of vaccinations and booster, and then waltzed into the pub whereContinue reading “Music to our ears”
off the hook 