“Fourth floor,” warbled the disembodied female voice in our hotel elevator in Edinburgh. She drew out “fourth” like it was two syllables, “FAAH-uth.” Our “Roads Scholar” tour guide Kevin, who is English, tilted his head and said, “That’s a rather posh voice.” Can a voice be posh? This was news to me. I always thought […]
Sure-footed as mountain goats, my sister Long-Long and I picked our way down the steep, narrow dirt path that typified much of Hong Kong’s terrain. Rough-cut slabs of stone, some cracked and dangerous, bridged over ravines. I was seven. Rose was a year younger. We were on our own, on our way to catch the […]
“Cairo.” Sister Cathlin, our High School English teacher, pointed to the word she had written on the blackboard and asked, “Does anyone know where this is?” “It’s a city in Egypt,” I blurted. I burned in embarrassment when she said, “Yes, but … it’s also a town at the Southern tip of Illinois. It’s pronounced KAY-row.” […]
Can a book be whimsical and deadly serious at the same time? A grammar book, no less. In the history of my learning how to write, I have never gotten through the first few pages of a writing style book (Strunk and White, AP Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style from the University of Chicago). They […]
I never thought of myself as a memoirist until a friend said it. But of course, I am. My Dr. Bookworm “gonzo book reviews” discuss books, yes, but also describes how my life, actions and outlook change because of those books. I’ve long wanted to – felt obligated to – write about my family and my experiences […]
Intense eyes peer out from under white, bristly eyebrows. The look is hard to interpret: wary and suspicious? resolute? resigned? defiant? Beard and mustache blend into one white stream, flowing down cheeks and spilling onto the front of his tunic. He leans on an insubstantial staff, barely sturdy enough to bear his weight. It’s a strange-looking […]
I have long contended that only men in prison enjoy lifting weights. That’s because their lives are so boring! And for self-protection, of course. Still, why would the rest of us who have other options – like getting a root canal or reading War and Peace or just aerating the lawn – want to lift weights? I […]
In December of 2015, torrential rains caused parts of the St. Louis area to be evacuated. Bill and I were on vacation and saw it on TV. “We made the national news,” I exclaimed. I was dismayed when we arrived home. A great swath of the wall-to-wall carpeting in our basement had been soaked in that […]
Wildfires! Floods! Hurricanes! Heat waves! Droughts! And each catastrophe a record-breaker! Weather news these days sends me into a tailspin of despair and anxiety. And guilt. What is my duty? Do I have to give up air-conditioning to keep the planet from self-destructing? Would I? Reading science journalist Madeline Ostrander’s 2022 book At Home on an Unruly […]
Every night, the sharp rap of mah-jongg tiles being discarded and the clatter of tumbling tiles being “washed” echoed throughout our small apartment compound. The sound carried as every window was open to let in the breeze in sub-tropical Hong Kong. I was only six in 1953, but I already knew that the native Cantonese […]
In his 2021 novel Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr masterfully fits disparate people – across centuries, across continents, across planets – into this story of how humans respond to the fall of empires, to environmental degradation, to civilizational collapse. Twining throughout these episodes or escapades, like a vine girding a tree or like an evocative sound […]
What Matisse and Cézanne taught me about color, pattern and creating order This is Susan Caba’s fourth blogpost for Dr. Bookworm. Her others are “where you headed from here,” “i sleep with other people’s dogs,” and “The Bear on the Stairs: Tales of the Prairie, with Paintings.” Glossy, glamorous and lush with photos and generally sparse […]
You don’t survive medical training without being hard on yourself. You can’t function as an internist without being obsessive-compulsive. Even though Bill and I are retired physicians, we’ve retained previously-useful values: a hyper-vigilant alertness of the world around us and the fear of mistakes. Even though our decisions nowadays are no longer life-and-death, we still agonize over […]
“I don’t know.” “Cain’t get lost then.” Thurmond Watts, Nameless, Tennessee quoted in Blue Highways Guest Essay By Susan Caba My first journey was by car as a bundled infant, through the Yukon, from Fairbanks, Alaska, to the Lower 48, on the roughly paved Alaska-Canada highway. The roadway had been constructed for the military during […]
I do not watch sitcoms. Hence, when I picked up A Heart That Works, I had no clue who Rob Delaney was. He is a standup comic and the co-writer and star of the British/Amazon comedy series Catastrophe (2015 to 2019.) He is also the author of this sweet, sad, heartfelt memoir of his son’s death from a […]
“Just be yourself!” That is horrible advice. The “self” is a moving target. We constantly evaluate and re-define who we are. Our “personality” changes every time we get new input from what we hear from others and from what we tell ourselves in response to events. Usually, we’re not even aware that we’re re-thinking our […]
Should Bill and I continue to guard our Covid virginity like medieval maidens? Do we stay in the tower? I am wracked with cognitive dissonance. One minute, I think, “I am going to die, and take Bill with me!” And then I go, “I should just enjoy my life.” I am jealous of my friends’ trips […]
‘Tis the Season! For forgiveness, generosity, renewal! So, of course, we’re going to talk about A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol is a thin book, a novella really, that has resurfaced in many iterations: the 1938 movie with the Lockhart family as the Cratchits; the 1951 Alastair Sims version; and friend Laurie’s favorite, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas […]
“You! Go up front,” barked the teacher as she pointed with her chin for me to join the half-dozen children milling at the front of the cramped classroom. I shuffled from my seat toward the group. We were the kids who had failed the fingernail inspection. As we faced the class, the seated students broke […]
A guest review by Susan Caba Susan Caba is a writer who has been house – and dog – sitting around the country for the past few years, caring for beloved pets while their human companions travel. She and her son read many dog-focused books when he was a child, including Where the Red Fern […]
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