I’ve stayed at hundreds of hotels across the nation and in 31 countries. My kids say I’m a hotel snob. When a Kimpton Hotel is in town, it's a no brainer, unless there’s more than one. The interior design appeals to my side of the brain. The fresh,...

Snow falling in record quantities has not deterred God’s smaller creatures from visiting the bird feeder outside my window. Nor has it impacted their access behaviors. Presently, black-capped chickadees are having a free for all—two, then five, now...

The Rest of the (Thankful for an MRI?) Story The MRI, if not the nightly pain, prompted me to sign up for the rotator-cuff repair, a 70-minute procedure that was successfully completed on Tuesday afternoon (12/13). It was difficult to keep count, but...

Grateful for an MRI Well, I went in for an MRI, and the diagnosis was not good: Claustrophobia. But I’m getting ahead myself. While studying x-rays of my shoulder, my doc ordered an MRI. I told him we were nearing eight on the pain scale and...

If you grew up in church, you probably know about eating Sunday school paste. My kids liked the hint of wintergreen. Good thing it was harmless because a lot of kids dipped, and more than a few liked it. But hey, no harm, no foul. Not so for the...

While Googling bar-code medication-administration (BCMA), one results page included an interesting article: “Barcode medication administration demons…” You bet I clicked on that one. However, because my display window was not opened wide enough,...

Seems my grandkids are hearing the same sound bites from their parents that my kids heard from theirs. Yesterday my always neat-and-tidy daughter Alison interrupted her one-year-old Georgie’s exploration of food bits on the floor with a “Gross....

In the early 1970s, Alan Haberman (then in his early forties) chaired an ad hoc committee that chose the UPC bar code for the grocery industry. For the next decade Alan unrelentingly worked to persuade manufacturers, retailers and the public to accept...

I’ve been thinking about baseball, movies, ambiguous bar codes, and the FDA. On June 26, 1974, New York Yankee All-Star Derek Jeter was born, two-time Academy Award winner Elizabeth Taylor divorced (for the fifth time), and Sharon Buchanan, a young...

I’ve been thinking about pops, mobility, POPs, and opportunity. My pops is 90, and his mobility is waning—though he’s yet to entertain the idea of using a walker. He loves outings to Costco but navigating a shopping cart through the aisles is...