Issue 4 – Non-Fiction

Well, it has been since January 2020 that we have been talking about COVID-19. It was December 2019 when first cases of infection were described in China, or maybe when the first case appeared in these United States on the West Coast. The disease or the pandemic as it is called now has affected several […]

A month after I retired from the University of Florida in 2007, two letters came in the mail from England: my birth certificate (February 23, 1942), replacing the one I’d lost somewhere on my travels, and my final pension award from Newcastle-on-Tyne. Newcastle is not only home to the British Pension Office but also the city of my father’s recent death. This full life cycle, tucked into two envelopes resting one on the other in my mailbox, sent me off on a journey of reminiscence.

Everybody has one. Everybody has their person. The one who was “the reason for going into it.” Who knows how many different names show up in each medical school application? Clarke Wesley Johnson. Not born to but adopted by Hans and Judy Johnson; the first boy of the family. He had darker skin than the rest of the household and a large scar from the top of his chest to his belly button.