March 2000
I’m living inside the folds of a living planet, held by its gravity, wrapped in its atmosphere, breathing in and breathing out. How can I forget this? No, I don’t like rainy days. Still, I can praise the rain.
Sunbeams
As I grew to adolescence, I imagined, from closely observing the boredom and vexations of matrimony, that the act my parents committed and the one I so longed to commit must be two different things.
An Epidemic Of Deception
Why We Can’t Trust The Cancer Establishment — An Interview With Samuel Epstein
The American Cancer Society’s money — even that used for research — is spent in ways guaranteed not to offend either big polluters or big pharmaceutical companies. Why? In part, because the board of the ACS is closely interlocked with those same companies.
Open Season
The redwoods of northern California rise around us as we snake along Highway 101 somewhere south of Eureka. The air here is plush, sunlight slanting through wisps of fog among the trees. Looking out the window, my daughter says, “Look, Mommy. The light is realer.”
Happy Bird Day Lorenzo
Just as I am about to leave for the North, my birthday appears. I’m willing to forget it, but my pals won’t hear of it. When I get to La Huerta late in the afternoon on my last day in Puerto Perdido, they bring out a cake that they’ve bought with their own money.
Practicing Love
We are walking in a ticker-tape parade. That’s all that’s going on. Some pieces of confetti read “great calves,” some “chronic sinus,” some “no noticeable hair loss,” some “multiple sclerosis,” and some “third-finger amputation.” Don’t judge your neighbor by what pieces of paper fall on his or her shoulders. Don’t think you are cursed or blessed by what pieces fall on yours.
Photographs By Art Myers
I am still haunted by the memory of the phone call from my mother telling me in a trembling voice that my sister Joanne, still in her thirties, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Following a prolonged, heroic battle to survive, she was eventually to die from that disease. Two decades later, I anxiously faced a surgeon in an antiseptic hospital waiting room as he uttered the dreaded words “Your wife has breast cancer.”
