Short Story

Submitted.  Including a $25 submission fee. Once in a while, a journal or magazine to which I subscribe invites short stories from readers and others with the prize being seeing your name in print and your ideas broadcast to others.  I've entered two medical ones sponsored by The New England Journal in recent years.  To be sure, the ones the editors selected far exceeded my 1500 words in imagination and elegance.  Yet there was value to me in the few hours it took to compose, edit, and submit my own manuscript.  Much of what I write, the means of expressing myself, is descriptive, bordering on journalism.  Term papers are long gone and I've never had a published research paper.  But I engage in a lot of commentary.  Those 1000 word submissions created over a few hours appear periodically and generate a little comment.  Unfortunately, in this day of FB, X, and similar public forums, thought has been replaced by Tweets, those quick sentence or two retorts whose brevity and straightforward wording get captured in less than a minute.  Journalists seem to hang out on Twitter when not composing their own articles because of the brevity, and usually superficiality, of the comments, which often reflect the id of the typer. 

My current challenge arrived passively from a reputable and widely read Jewish magazine, which has printed my letters in the past, along with one tongue in cheek satiric photo I took near my workplace.  It had to be of Jewish content, less than 5K words, and with a due date.  Short story, fiction.  I rarely write fiction, though I've taken to assigning myself at least two novels a year since retirement, never falling short of that quota and often exceeding it.  But short stories are often difficult for me to read, as they are expected to be read in a single sitting, the length frequently in excess of my attention span.  Yet fiction may reflect the pinnacle of language.  It requires the author to transform his or her mindset to somebody else's, to tell a story with actions, physical descriptions, conflicts, and unexpected outcomes all projected on a narrator other than himself.  In effect, giving the glory of language to people who do not exist in reality, yet would be recognizable if they did.

The writer, or verbal storyteller, also has to have motivation to organize and convey what he thinks.  Frequently the stories are tangential to an author's experience, or a real encounter fictionalized.  But sometimes the subject is somebody else's experience either witnessed or imagined by the storyteller.

For me the Jewish subject was easy to choose.  People designated as leaders often do not put optimal treatment of people ahead of the objectives of the institutions they are trained to lead.  Some very good people who could have been contributors, or often were contributors, become ideological sacrifices.  No shortage of these incidents to expound upon.  And I did.

Off it went to an electronic submission service along with a credit card authorization.  And there it is likely to stay until dismissed by the magazine's editor scanning the first paragraph some time after the due date.  But somebody, maybe a professional, maybe a writing hobbyist like me, will compose a tale that merits a broad audience.

Post-Vacation Reset

A traditional, though not always accurate purpose of vacation has been to return with the rest and vigor to work more effectively on return.  At least some of that is true in retirement.  I have things I want to do, in fact need to do, that have drifted this past summer.  And some that haven't drifted wore me out.  These ten days away, far away in France with its very different culture, separated me from nearly all my semi-annual projects.  No writing, no books, OLLI started without me, exercise informal as my daily step tracker far exceeded what it registers at home.  No finances, no home upgrades.  All can and did await my return.

On the plane home, saturated after a few hours of some rather relaxing Wellness Videos on the screen in front of my seat and periodic surfing the plane's progress map, I took out a small folder I had placed in my backpack, removed a sheet of loose-leaf paper, and jotted down in a mostly unorganized way the things I need to do between my return home and Thanksgiving.  Medical care, as in lab testing and doctors.  I suspect I am over medicated.  I also found the very large amounts of walking challenging, not tolerating long flights of stairs or up slopes very well.  My legs got tired, but sometimes I also needed a chance to catch my breath.  Hearing from the loudspeakers at the airport and plane could have been better.  I only took one Naproxen tablet and felt better within a few hours.  So medical care is priority.

Holy Days arrive within a few days of my return.  I practiced my assigned YK portion adequately, though not a lot.  While away the assignment expanded to the full morning's reading, which I had not photocopied in advance, so I'll need to polish that.  Very simple meal preparation for RH, more elaborate for the sukkah, where I intend to have at least one guest.  Sent out one annual greeting to an old friend.  Should do two or three more.  And daughter visiting for YK.  

I projected out to Thanksgiving.  I have a manuscript due before Sukkot.  And if I am going to ever write the book I dream of writing, I need to be maniacal about writing sessions, which I have not been.  Before Thanksgiving I need to touch base with the financial advisor on my mandatory IRA distributions which take effect in the next calendar year and wife's mandatory Social Security benefits, both of which will change our cash flow significantly.

Also need to complete the year's gardening.  And I've not abandoned some help with making My Space optimal, purging books, and even hiring a biweekly cleaning crew.  

Did vacation energize me?  I think it did.  I feel less dragged, more rested.  Will I be kinder, more cordial, more cheerful?  At least at the beginning.  But first unpack.

Mind Prods

Senior and retired.  Every day a stream of challenges, mostly imposed upon me.  In grade school somebody else set the curriculum and I complied.  Once college arrived I had some discretion of what I wanted to study.  There were classes, there were social encounters.  Come medical school the curriculum was again mostly imposed but rigorous, challenging me most waking hours.  Then residency and career, some forty years of this, with patients in a continuous stream needing guidance, often me needing to learn more from either consultants or study.  Retirement resets that.  There are no mental imperatives other than what I create.  So what have I created?

Not a trivial undertaking.  I still keep a subscription to my favorite medical journal and read two articles from it each week.  I subscribe to The Atlantic and The Forward, reading one article a day from the former, two from the latter, and making an effort to comment to the author.  As much as I generally detest Twitter, this seems the most expeditious platform for feedback, though private emails to authors often get a response.  For a long time I had to produce a column for Medscape each month.  Not being personally within the medical loop, the quality of my submissions waned so I gave it up.  I do not have a substitute.  Still, I have maintained furrydoc.com, striving for a submission each day, irrespective of whether anyone reads my comments.  They are still personal expressions.  

I make an effort to watch a TED talk each day, and do pretty well with this.  A reading quota used to appear on my semi-annual projects list.  I dropped this initiative, as I was already doing it without having to target it for special attention.  Three books every half-year, one audio, one e-book, one traditional with subjects distributed over fiction, non-fiction, and Jewish.  Two months into this cycle, I've done two e-books, fiction and Jewish.  

My day starts with crosswords.  I enjoy doing them, though I'm not particularly adept.  I could try to get more proficient by either looking up clues, which I regard as cheating though it's probably really educational, or looking up and studying the final answer to the clues I missed.  But right now, I think just the recreational element of thinking what the letters should be will suffice.

Each school term, I take courses at the Osher Institute, usually four, usually lecture format.  I used to like to take discussion style classes but those have become less available since the pandemic.

And each Monday evening I make a YouTube video where my talking head discusses a topic for about seven minutes.

While I've done well with petty expression, what I've not done well, indeed underperformed, has been replacing that monthly Medscape column with presentations of comparable length requiring comparable effort that others may want to read.  I try, but have been inconsistent with output.  It's one thing to sit through lectures or read articles of other people's minds, quite another to create my own.  As valuable as being part of the audience has been, I need to focus more effectively as a content creator.  That's where this set of semi-annual projects directs me.  Good attempts.  Not good consistency.  Focus on this.  My senior mind depends on it.

Editing Non-fiction Manuscripts

Latched onto my Writer's Group last week.  Read a manuscript, as my printer failed.  Roundly critiqued to where I understand professional editors all declined it.  Too long.  Parts did not fit together.  While perhaps a masterpiece of thought, it was not a masterpiece or reading.  Yet the critiques were much appreciated for their objectivity and candor.

I have a lot more to edit.  But submissions are among this cycle's Semi-Annual projects.  The composition keeps my mind agile.  My spirit would be better if it were shared with readers, but that takes a measure of discipline and compliance with the rules that the different potential destinations have.  If that's what it takes, that should be what I do.

Probably Doing Something Wrong

Not been able to get my thoughts accepted for publication.  What I thought was my best Jewish writing, really good analysis and expression, keeps getting declined by places I thought might like to have them.  And the responses all come with a no thanks, yet never an explanation how to make the articles more acceptable.

Perhaps I write what I write for my own analysis without regard to a reader, while the editors are entirely focused on the reader.  And to be fair, other than The Forward, I don't really read what they do publish.  And my word counts are too high.

There are regional writers groups where I can seek an editor.  Or I can see what my OLLI teacher can recommend.  Or maybe better, would be to pick the places where I have sent items and read some of what they accept, both in ideas and expression.

My semi-annual goals have always measured submissions, as I have no control over publication.  Still, I am disappointment that my effort, maybe my most passionate thinking, was not better received. 

Day of Chores

As much as I want to move along with writing and other self-expression, today may turn out better dedicated to chores.  Cold laundry sorted, both regular and gentle.  More than the usual amount of gentle.  None takes very long once sorted.  Just tote each basket downstairs, put in the right machine at the right time, let the washer and drier perform, fold, and return the garments to their assigned place in my bedroom.  Ample dishes to do.  Not that many fleishig ones remain.  And I need to reseason the cast iron grill pan from its ordeal with a rib steak.  Then exchange sink to milchig and do those dishes.  I've already done a load of milchig dishwasher, so the rest need to be washed by hand, which I mostly find relaxing.

My herb pots seem to be going well.  In the backyard the flowers and vegetables could use some watering.  I should begin weeding.  And I bought a package of Swiss chard seeds.  Maybe plant three grids of these, or a dozen.  Thinning seedlings is premature.

And today's centerpiece, completing the transfer of my house to the revocable trust to avoid probate at some future time.

Those are the do it and done tasks.  I also have room and space tidying.  My Space with its destination desk, the kitchen, my half of the bedroom.  Never quite done.  Multiple schemes to promote progress, from setting a timer for a fixed duration of effort or setting a subtask to work on until completion.  Short bursts of intermediate progress.

But in the end, while having all the laundry and dishes done generates some tangible accomplishment, I've always had a preference for my mental efforts.  So no matter how much laudable household chores or errands I do, my assessment of how the day went falls back to what I read or wrote.  Time for that not only gets carved into each day, but with a timer that allows nothing else as it ticks to zero.

OLLI on Hiatus

Spring OLLI session completed.  I took three four top-notch courses, meeting MWF mornings. MF on site, Wednesday at my laptop.  I had signed up for  fifth course, one taken on my one time On Demand.  I never opened it, apologizing for that lapse to the instructor when I ran into him.

My schedule as it was left every afternoon open.  Some of the time I used well, much of it not.  It also left me two mornings open.  I could be counted upon to take my medicine and exercise on the treadmill those mornings.  But having something scheduled, a place I need to be at a time I need to be there forces me to pay attention at least during those times.

Summer break has begun.  I'm trying to keep those set hours to finally write the enduring work, a book, that I desired to write but not so much desire as to commit to what it takes to do that.  I think I can, with the OLLI hours redirected to the project.

Do It First

Do the things you are mostly likely to make excuses not to do first.  For me, that's the treadmill, or really tackling the book I've increasingly committed myself to write.  But the treadmill session is far easier to put on a schedule and do it at a set time, usually around 8:30AM on scheduled days.  I don't especially like to stretch either.  That comes at 4PM on scheduled days.  Writing doesn't come as easy to schedule, let alone do first as a task to complete quickly.  My physical sessions get checked off as accomplished, those one and done's.  Mental tasks don't unless I have a submission deadline, which I don't for this landmark work that I want to do.

I have friends and relatives with books to their name, some more than one.  Nearly all my humanities professors have authored books.  And I read articles daily, and about six full books each semi-annual cycle.  So I know it is doable.  And like anything else doable but difficult, specific time needs to be allocated for it.  I've also told a few people of my intentions, which should place my feet a little closer to the fire on getting it done.

Do it first, or at least at a set time.  Pretty successful with exercise.  Reasonably successful with daily reading of The Atlantic-The Forward- TED talk which I target for mid-afternoon every day.  Furrydoc.blogspot.com has accumulated by daily effort each morning.  Hakaras HaTov log filling with entries five days a week.  And a weekly YouTube of Dr. Plotzker's Mind seems to be posted consistently nearly every Monday night.  And my Medscape column made it to the editor on deadline for years, though with the incentive of a contractual payment for performance.

I really want the book as my legacy.  I know how to go about it.  Now I need to go about it.

Taking Control

Good day yesterday, Good enough to stand out.  My hip has almost returned to baseline about ten days after injury but I'll keep my appointment with the new ortho group that interacted with me well when I needed them to.  Met with travel agent.  Wife and I differ on how much we want to spend for our anniversary trip.  I bought time, if only to change the credit card to one with more rewards.  Returned to my treadmill at very low intensity, but I could do it.

And decided for sure what I want the book that I can never discipline myself for sustained writing to be about.  It will be why institutional Judaism declined as it did with the Federation Types in charge of it.  Novelized form.  Began the background writing.

Took charge of some overdue filing.  Took charge of my downstairs work spaces, the desk and the kitchen.

I feel accomplished.  It is not often that I feel accomplished.

Out for Coffee

Coffee houses have been places of gathering for centuries.  Partly to get coffee, partly to engage minds.  It's still that way, though in a very different form.  Melitta cones, k-cup brewers, French presses are all durable equipment, with disposable filters and the ground coffee enabling anybody at home to get a decent cup, maybe a second or a third, at a fraction of what Starbucks or equivalent will charge for a marginally better tasting brew.  Unlike 18th Century Europe, or even the current Publik Houses of the British Isles, or even the NYC automats, people at American coffee houses don't really mingle randomly.  Sometimes we come with another person or two for a targeted conversation or to conduct business on neutral turf.  More often these days it's just me and my laptop with the fee for the beverage more a brief rental of space to sometimes connect with individuals or institutions located far from the site, sometimes to do work away from the distractions of the home base.

After some not very effective attempts to tell a story of squandered congregational standards left over from a few months back, I took my fully charged laptop to Brew HaHa, paid the $3 for a mid-sized dark roast, which I spiced with a splash of cinnamon and cardamom, left unsweetened, then placed the device and me at a quiet counter where my front line of sight only had a choice of the screen or an undecorated wall.  And I typed and I sipped.  All background to the story.  Never got to the main point that I want to tell, though I will eventually get there.  And once I do, I will need to edit out the background.  That took half a paper cup of coffee.  Closed the laptop, returned to the car, went home, let the story languish the rest of the day.  Left the coffee to chill in the car's cupholder until late afternoon.  Finished it.

Finish the story today, or at least its unedited draft.

Expressing Myself

Might I seriously consider reconnecting to Twitter?   Or Sermo?  Social media has gotten some justified negative assessments, from time sink, which it is for sure, to swamp of the toxic, to transporting our perfectly agile minds to echo chambers where they can languish.  All true.  But their popularity rests in an inherent desire for people to express what they think in an environment of no personal risk.  Can't do that at work.  Can't just say what we think of our Rabbi or Pastor in an open forum.  Can do that on Twitter.

To construct my day yesterday, I extracted a subset of my Daily Task List to identify how I would like to express my thoughts during that single day.

1. Add to text in the book I committed myself to writing
2. Comment to an author my thoughts on her book
3. Comment on an editorial from The Forward
4. Comment on an article from a subscription that is about to expire without renewal
5. Write a blog entry
6. Comment on a KevinMD essay of my choosing
7. Begin an article on physician retirement that a site invited me to do
8. Finish my article on misuse of synagogue seating during our Holy Days
9. Start my comments on my congregation's Rabbinical future
10. Add my thoughts to r/Judaism on Reddit

Ten worthy forums where I have thoughts.  Ten where I don't particularly care what any reader would find objectionable.  I completed five, worked on two others, saved the other three for a concentrated effort not that far into the future.

Probably should make a similar list every day, and keep score on how well I do each day.

Juggling Ideas

Since my day trip tomorrow will fall victim to rain, I declare today and tomorrow writing days, allotted time for what I hope will be public expression.  Medscape monthly submission due next week.  NEJM fiction entry due next week.  Been off SSRIs long enough to tell that story.  Listening to an audiotape whose author deserves feedback.  

Ideas develop better when interactive, but often some undistracted sessions connecting my mind and my fingers on the keyboard generates the best thinking and more refined expression than the sponteneity of oral interaction.

See what I can create for submission in two days.

Dealing with Failures

My first week of my newly advanced age could have gone better.  Spent that first week wobbly, perhaps orthostatic.  My daughter came from Oakland for my birthday and Passover, which is always a treat, though with a few elements of strain woven into an overwhelming fabric of pride.  I could not do treadmill.  Pesach preparation took its toll.  I committed myself to submitting two decent articles to editors, both promptly rejected.  Missed my only OLLI session of the semester, partly from logistics of Passover and daughter visit, partly from fatigue, partly from marginal interest.  My nurtured indoor starter plants all fizzled when I put them out into the sunshine.  I even stopped keeping a daily list of projects I planned to do each day.  Tough week.  Not cheerful.

But the cycles of nature go on.  Next birthday less than another year away with prospects for recapturing the path to fulfillment, if not pleasure.  I still have the articles to revise for another purpose.  Returned to the treadmill and my full goal intensity after the week's layoff.  Pesach on autopilot mostly.  Daily list back in action.  I can buy vegetable starters from the local nursery.  Still not restored to cheerful, but not despondent either.  Probably emerging from a week's languis

hing.  

Week of Expression

Now halfway through my semi-annual cycle. Mostly progressing well except for inadequate verbal expression.  My OLLI courses are not at all interactive, mostly talking heads or Great Courses.  I set time to write, start but don't seem satisfied with what I've expressed. Focus on that this week, along with getting set for Pesach.

Expressing What I Think

Social Media's availability has certainly created its share of trolls.  That's not what I really wanted to say, because snarky people of limited intellect have been around since the early days of language.  What's different has been the expansion of the audience into cyberspace.  People's expressions of what they think has not changed. My own skill at articulating what I really mean has these ongoing faulty meanings which never get fully resolved.

Like everyone else, I have experiences, thoughts, positions, and reactions that need to be transformed from cerebral storage into written expression.  Sometimes I care if I have somebody else to receive those articulated ideas, sometimes not, or at least not right now.

As my semi-annual initiatives have moved along roughly halfway through this allotted calendar segment, my self-expression goals have lagged behind some of the others.  As I think of a topic I wish to develop, I jot it on a dedicated sheet of paper for storage in a dedicated folder.  I've accumulated fifteen subjects, written and sent to editors only two.  Partially written quite a few more.  It is that barrier from partially expressed to suitable for a reader which has stymied me this past quarter.

I currently struggle over two themes.  My Jewish experience over a lifetime has failed to reach it's potential.  In the world of machers, if I don't have a favorable experience with their organization there must be something inferior about me.  It's probably not true, and may underlie why the exit ramps of Jewish affiliation seem as congested as they are.  In no uncertain terms, whether my sense of being rebuffed is accurate, it is my conclusion.  And organizational attrition speaks for itself.  Putting this form of 2+2 into a few paragraphs has met many revisions, even though the concrete personal examples are plentiful and easy to describe.  I have been using real examples of exclusion, hoping to assemble them into a unifying principle with neglected but possible remedies, but the cohesiveness of expression has not been forthcoming.

Like many others, I find the political transformation from thought to enhance public outcome to sloganeering intended to create loyal tribes distressing.  But do I engage in that myself, though in a more dignified way?  And what intersectionalities do I have?  Where did they come from?  This essay, using the White Board in My Space, filled out with values on one side, implementation on the other, has gone better than the other, though not entirely coherent.

My language skills being more than adequate, the gap between idea and expression may be in an uncertainty of what I want to convey.  I'll struggle with some drafts and editing, but I really seem to have the motivation to merge the conceptual to the articulate.  A struggle to be sure, but one that is gratifying once completed and submitted, no matter how much self-editing these projects entail.

Without Laptop

My HP device was tried and true for its five or so years, meaning about $120 per year or $10 per month.  It failed twice, requiring some costly though cost-effective repair.  Once some settings went awry, the other time the hard drive reached the end of its life span.  It's terminal event was more ignominious, drowning in herb tea from a cup that got knocked over from an overfilled and off balanced desktop stand. Those Geeks at Best Buy were able to save its data but not its innards.

It had what I needed.  Ample ports, comfortable keyboard with visible letters whose keys responded to my multi-fingered touch.  I had personalized it with a sticker of an SLU Billiken.  If lost, as I would transport it to OLLI and often far destinations, it had a sticker with my name and address, though neither my phone number nor email contact which would have been more useful to an honest finder of lost objects.  It served me well until its abrupt end, surfing me through the world, enabling a few Power Point presentations, providing me a forum to articulate what I thought through social media responses, my blogs, or submissions for publications.

Among my many good fortunes has been a reasonable accumulation of wealth which enabled me to seek a replacement as soon as the Geek informed me of my pseudo-animate friend's demise.  While still at Best Buy I looked at replacements. I don't particularly like shopping there, though they have the best computer service.  Their selection of laptops, and even the option of an All-in-One, was placed by professional marketers who know how to make the expensive alluring but keeping the lower priced options either more obscure in the display or more typically placed adjacent to a gleaming model so the comparison becomes more obvious, even it the disparity in value isn't.  Staples did better.  It's where I had purchased my now departed device.  They had a very small display, which is good.  There are studies showing that people who choose from among a handful of options tend to prove more content with their selection than those who choose among dozens.  Too many thoughts of what could have been.  But I knew all that I saw fell short of what I had just lost, and the Staples Geeks did not distinguish themselves when I needed them.  Since Target had to be passed to get home, I stopped there too.  Mostly lower end Chomebooks, though I had to look up what a Chromebook was when I got home.  It's low price and portability would probably make it a useful second device for travel if I opted for an All-in-One desktop replacement.  Once home, my smart phone connected me to online Amazon and Staples, each reliable, though with an overwhelming array of choices.  By days end, I used the filtering devices to get something very similar to what I had both in features and in price.  Staples had a lower price but less desirable supplemental warranty, so I went with Amazon, paying the extra $50 for the item and securing a four year warranty that covers all unintentional mishaps. In my two decades of dependence on these electronics, this is my second unsalvageable liquid spill, the first being my first decent smart phone.  Worth the peace of mind.

These days without a real keyboard exposed me to a previously unrealized reality of our Covid isolation.  In the past, when I needed a keyboard with screen, our local library served as a good safety net.  I almost never had to wait for an available computer, though they limited each session to one hour and a total of three hours in any single day. While it was too public a place to log my finances on Excel, with a flash drive I could type away whatever I wanted to write on Word, keep my work in my possession, and transfer it to my home computer or pre-retirement to my at work desktop for further revision.  Alas, our library is closed.  My wife has a laptop which she offered to me but only used one time. It lacked a numeric keypad and the keys when pressed offered an insecure, maybe overused feel.  I could not type on it effortlessly as I could with mine, the library's, or my work desktop.  As a result, I only did a few time dependent essentials like renewing a medical license, but avoided creative expressions.  In the meantime I also obtained via online shopping a low end 10 inch tablet which replaced another tablet of similar generic vintage.  This one feels more substantial than its predecessor though less responsive.  I understand why it is of essentially disposable price.  Adequate for reading from the internet, maybe even pretty good for reading an e-book.  Not at all suitable for typing in anything more profound than a password.

So I found myself with the more verbal segments of my mind stymied a few days.  Fast and short tweets or FB responses dominated. My more weighty thoughts require longer words, more complex sentence structure, the ability to navigate between sources, a thesaurus to help me select a more precise word than my mind generated, and to copy and paste what I find via exploration.  All this had to be set aside, not really a form of vacation to be pursued with renewed vigor, but more like an illness that would require convalescence once Amazon delivered the replacement laptop and the salvaged contents of its predecessor restored.  In the midst of feeling deprived, though, an opportunity arose.  Without the keyboard, I resorted to taking notes on paper, jotting down fragments of my thoughts that could create more coherent compositions and sequence of thought than I have been able to do with keyboard alone.  It's how I was taught to think and transfer thoughts to paper.  Correction of composition was much harder with typewriter so having that outline has lost its importance, but these days with a note pad may have restored an important but overlooked skill.

I'm back.  New laptop up and going, though without a DVD drive which I use, but HP deemed obsolete.  My notes on what I want to write about some uneasy Jewish organizational relations appeared in my line of vision as I resumed my first Word initiative on my new device.  The days away were not a vacation from expressing what I think but forced some useful return to previous processes that I realize now had become underutilized.

Fluid Day

One of those fluid days, literally and figuratively.  Sipping my second cup of herb tea, one of the varietals that has a more inviting picture on the box than taste.  Spiced cider earlier today.  Reached my daily three cup ration of coffee long before it could affect my sleep.  Maybe some sherry before dinner.  And a beverage of some type with shabbos dinner, at least kiddush wine.

As of this morning I had no appointments other than having dinner ready before candle lighting, an easy task with all dinner defrosted and microwave suitable, except the broccoli crown.

An enticing AJC seminar came my way, following a similar themed The Forward seminar last night on addressing the robust presence of antisemitism on the internet.  My professional writing has to go through an editor.  I cannot just submit something to a print or broadcast publication and demand its appearance, though forums like my blog do not have a barrier to deter their appearance in cyberspace.  Eventually the online platforms will either need better accountability for what appears there, much like broadcast media's enforceable standards or they will need to be broken up by anti-trust law, which may have an undesired consequence of their competing with each other to see who is most accepting of submissions they receive.  At the very least, a regulatory agency and regulatory laws have to emerge.  Nobody addressed the elephant in the room, the use of these platforms by sovereign foreign governments to disrupt America.  You can negotiate a solution, but ultimately a credible threat of the military protecting American interests affirms that we mean business on this.

I had intended to do my writing and thinking today.  Medscape topic selected a month ago, a difficult one.  Did some of the background reading and pretty much decided how to package and present my essay.  KevinMD was a little harder.  Three false starts on Consult Maven. 

My medical subjects could include my alma mater's establishment of a business ethics program with a Sugar Daddy to support it.  This would mandate its inclusion in the curriculum starting with the first year.  We had such a project called Community Medicine which, while well intentioned, diverted us from the hard science that dominates early medical school.  It was obvious to us that the requirement was imposed by somebody who had the means to impose it, not because it was essential to study at that stage of training in the format offered.  I suspect the same now with the Business Ethics initiative, more predicated on its availability and authority of its funding source than its essential nature.  It is a very important issue, though, one that impacts every physician from medical school through retirement. My entries into the blog rambled in thought.  I could restrict the focus better, finish the blog entry, and repackage the thoughts for KevinMD.  Aborted effort on how Covid-19 effectively diverted endless essays about how badly our employers treat their physicians or autonomy lost to more noble subjects that make our obligations to our patients worth the travails of our EHRs, intrusive administrators, and burnout.  I scrolled back to pre-Covid KevinMD publications.  To my surprise, the focus on our professional troubles had seemed to be on the wane before Covid-19 captured the American medical conversation.  Finally, I settled on something separate from Covid, but an unsaid part of medicine, the lack of pricing transparency.  We all know the stories of insane itemized markups and providers and payers who concur that it is too disruptive to fix.  A TED talk from a journalist who compiles real pricing information from real patients documents the lunacy.  Whether the cure is worse than the condition makes for a good discussion.  Put in Consult Maven first, then repackage.  This one seems to be going well.

Was hoping to do more around the house but haven't.  And I still want to get my monthly Jewish donation to its destination before shabbos.