Guest Column

ODE TO SPELLBINDING                                                      Hocus pocus, fully focus.                                                      Cast off the spell of the phone,                                                      And fully succumb to the joy zone.                                                      Presto, change-o, feel the glow.                                                      Find your mojo in the flow. A dictionary definition for SPELLBINDING is “holding one’s attention completely, rapturously, as though...

ODE TO NEIGHBORING                                          Neighbors come in lots of flavors;                                          Lovers, haters, givers, takers.                                          Not to belabor, though no message greater,                                          Love all neighbors on God’s green acres. The surest way to add more joy to your life is to add joy to others. “Those who...

                                                              ODE TO UNITING                                  (Dedicated to John Lennon and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) I have a dream and I’m inviting All to end the fighting and begin uniting. Imagine a dream of no more dividing, black and whiting; A bit of history rewriting, one world uniting. I have...

                                               ODE TO SMILE-MAKING When you’re smiling, the muscles it takes are 17. But, when you’re scowling, it takes 43 and looks so mean. When you’re smiling, you look better even on frumpy days with bad hair. Smiles are always in fashion, it’s the very most important thing...

“Starry Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh, one of the most joy-giving paintings in the history of art, is a major crowd-pleaser at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art, NYC). Hold on, mama, MOMA is our destination for “The Starry Starry Night Birthday Party.” Mr. van...

Royal Princess Grace Kelly grew up in a charming two-and-half-story American Colonial-style house at 3901 Henry Avenue, Philadelphia, PA. This is our destination for “The Stars and Stripes Forever Birthday Party.” The house was built in 1928 by Grace Kelly’s dad, John B. Kelly, a...

(Announcer): “From ‘Television City’ in beautiful Burbank, California—It’s ‘The Tonight Show Birthday Party’ with Johnny Carson and this week’s special, joy-giving guests: singer/songwriter Katy Perry, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Moss Hart, New York comedy icons Fanny Brice and Fran Lebowitz, that ‘Family...

It’s late-August and we are cooling off with the joy-giving, cool kids on a giant ice ring at “The Ringy-Dingy Birthday Party.”  The United States has hosted the modern Olympic games, which started in 1896, in six locations: Atlanta (Summer, 1996), Lake Placid, New York...

September 11, 2001 – Sarasota, Florida: It was a beautiful day as I stepped out of a bungalow at a tennis resort where President Bush and his traveling team, including Secretary of Education Rod Paige and I, had stayed overnight. As Chief of Staff...

I have been practicing medicine 28 years, and coronavirus is an altogether new experience for me. The biggest surprise for me is how rapidly my own opinions have changed. I have gone from, “COVID-19 won’t be that big of a deal here” to, “This...