December 21, 2009: Winter

the partition of the year between warmth and cold, fertility and barren
six pomegranate seeds

Paradoxical: motion. so it seems

Pre-existing Condition

Life itself is a pre-exisiting condition.

Consider your genetic inheritance. you are born with pre-exisiting conditions, benign and malignant. Shame on insurance companies and shame on our "enlightened government," the supine Obama presidency. Health care. good health care, is a right all citizens should have; insurance companies should not exist, since health is not their concern; rather it is profit. The CEOs, why not profile their homes in Hosue and Gardens? Ill-gotten gains.

But death will claim even the wealthiest CEO. The brevity of life was graphically depicted in western-European art, not surprisingly. All succumbed to diseases whose origin was not understood. Today science, medical science, demonstrates convincingly how diseases are contracted, how environmental factors, especially substances carried in air and water, such as arsenic, cause cancers and other deadly diseases.The health bill being considered in Congress disallows women from obtaining abortions, a right guaranteed by law. Shame on the Obama administration. A spokesperson who is literate, brilliant, persuaive is no better than his illiterate ignorant predecessor, Bush 2. What a trick!

Life is a Pre-Existing Condition

Paul Caspari, MD: in memoriam, 1867, January 27--1937, December 16

My grandfather Paul Caspari, MD, died in Berlin in 1937, during a gallbladder operation; he suffered a heart attack. My mother Beate Caspri-Rosen, MD, always recalled him as a wonderful father and an ideal doctor, "the good doctor," so sorely missing from practice today in the United Sates. (for more on my grandfather, see my website www.profkoslow.com, Family, Beate Caspari-Rosen, essays). I was born five years after his death so the man in the pictures and the oral and written history is all that remains of this wonderful person. I have selected a 1927 picture which is in much need of restoration that shows my grandfather hiking in a region in Germany; a photograph taken shortly after he married his spouse, my grandmother Flora Arnswalder Caspari; the cover of the Trauer Album (grieving/ memorial book) given to my grandmother and the page which records the dates when the jahrzeit (memorial) candle is to be lit, a practice that I maintain, but one that will end with my demise. Finally, the tomb at Weissensee Cemetery as it appeared several years ago.

Emma: Happy Birthday, part 4

Aesop and Emma, talking; Aesop looking after his baby sister Emma; Emma with a monkey doll, sleeping, and Emma, spunky monkey as Harold likes to call her, trying out a bone, chewy. As it turned out Emma's mouth was too small to hold a ball and we were concerned that she might choke on rawhide or other chewy toys. But Emma's independence is evident in this picture. She has remained so; my body, myself. A charmer. So blessed we have been to have our Aesop and Emma, as we were with Kate and Fala, siblings through adoption but deepest love nontheless. Each one was always concerned about the other's well being.
Dogs are not a lesser life form; canines are thinking, emotional beings, but they are not human, for which we are grateful.

Emma: Happy Birthday, part 3

Emma in Maine, summer 2009; Emma in Tenafly, 2008 and Emma in Tenafly 2008; Emma and Harold, Halloween, 2005?