With help from both of my parents, as well as one of my sisters, I started a neighborhood newspaper in 1967, when I was 9 years old. The Neighborhood Weekly, as we called it, served homeowners in our section of Chevy Chase, Maryland, which is an upscale bedroom community right outside Washington, D.C. I served as co-editor with my sister, as well as writer/reporter. I'm proud to say that one of my fellow kid reporters was Michael Kranish, who went on to cover the White House for the Boston Globe and is now (as of 2020) an investigative reporter for the Washington Post. I'm also proud to say that one of our adult neighbors was Norman Grossblatt, who at the time edited a medical journal and went on to help found the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences. (Small world: I earned BELS certification in 2008.)

In the February/March 1967 issue of The Neighborhood Weekly, Michael filed a compelling report of his Cub Scout pack's field trip to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. In that same issue, I wrote articles about traffic safety, George Washington's birthday, and coin collecting. As my contribution to the Poetry Department, I stole a short poem by Ogden Nash, without attribution. I also authentically reported and wrote a series of thumbnail profiles of neighborhood families (including the Grossblatts), with a special emphasis on the children, their hobbies, and their potential as playmates for other kids in the neighborhood. Finally, I penned an absolutely riveting account of my last dental appointment.

In my spare time I enjoy climbing hills on my bicycle, spinning the wheel on my rowing machine, building stone retaining walls in my garden, touring wine regions with my wife of 33 years, visiting our grown children, spoiling our grandchildren, and mailing free books to help children of divorced parents across the United States and around the world.

My first writing memory dates to when I was in the fifth grade at Chevy Chase Elementary School in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Our teacher, Miss Gebert, assigned an English essay for homework. I don't recall the subject of the essay, but I do recall showing my first draft to my mother, who had majored in literature at Sarah Lawrence College and knew a thing or two about good writing. Mom advised me to make some changes to my essay that would never have occurred to me on my own. The revised version pleased Miss Gebert so much, she had me come to the front of the class and read my essay aloud to all my classmates. The aspects of my essay that pleased my teacher so much, and which in her view distinguished my work from that of other kids in my class, were the same revisions my mother had advised me to make. I'll never forget how proud, well-educated, and loved I felt. Needless to say, my esteem for my mother's literary wisdom rose a notch or two that day.

Some of the earliest stories in my memory are Bible stories, especially ones my mother read me from Hurlbut's Stories of the Bible. (The paperback copy on my office shelf was published in 1966 by Pyramid Publications Inc. for the Fleming H. Revell Company.) The stories I remember best are mostly from the Old Testament, such as the fall of Adam and Eve, Noah's ark and the promise of the rainbow, the Tower of Babel, Moses and the Ten Commandments, David slaying Goliath, fire and brimstone falling on Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, Joshua winning the Battle of Jericho, Jacob cheating Esau out of his inheritance, Joseph and his brightly colored robe, and the horrible death of David's son Absalom.

It's hard to say the impact of any one of these stories in particular. To my mind, the lessons they teach have a timeless quality. As a result, their relevance comes into sharp focus at times and then fades for a while. One story which seems particularly relevant to me right now in my career is the Tower of Babel. In Hurlbut's this is called "The Tower That Was Never Finished," and it follows immediately after the story of Noah's ark. The story's key point is that if we do not all speak the same language, then we will grow apart and cease being able to communicate effectively, live together, and work together. The story's relevance to my life today comes from efforts of people within the profession of continuing education in the health professions to come up with a standard vocabulary to describe learning outcomes. Without a common vocabulary, it becomes impossible to compare results of programs that are undertaken by different companies, using different formats, at different points in time. The connection to the Old Testament story was made explicit in the title of a workshop offered in May of 2018 at a professional conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The workshop had this title: "The Tower of Babel: Enough Already, Can We Please Speak the Same Language?"

I really enjoy using my new 32-GB iPad running version 12.1.4 of the iOS. In particular, I like the sharp, colorful displays of photos, graphics, and other images. I also like how external links open speedily in a new window (after a brief warning asking me do I really wish to leave the ebook I'm reading), and then how easy it is to return and continue from where I left off.