Ezra's Essays

Category: Age

  • NO REGRETS

    When a man, such as myself, reaches the seventh decade of life, his friends and relatives congratulate him warmly and ask about his state of health. They seem to really want to inquire how long do you think you may stick around. When the eighth decade turns over on the speedometer, the efforts of friends…

  • “OLD AGE IS A DISEASE”

    -FRAU DOKTOR HERTA KNOPFMACHER FISCHER   I know a man who speaks lovingly, respectfully, and admiringly about his own mother-in-law. Can you imagine that? His mother-in-law furnished the title for this essay. This woman was born in 1878 in the Sudetenland. There is considerable mystery about whether in 1878 the Sudetenland belonged to the German…

  • BLOODY NOOSE-I-NANCE

    EEC dictation 11-17-05 1st DRAFT The subject of this essay today is blindness. No circumlocutions, no euphemisms, just plain blindness. The blindness, of course, has to do with your old essay writer. As time went on during the recent series of eye operations, it became apparent that aphasia began to make giant strides toward erasing…

  • THOSE GOLDEN YEARS | Meditations – Chapter Four

    There are many Americans who are cliché driven. When a person sneezes, they say “God bless you.” Tardiness is treated as “Better late than never.” Young daughters are told as they meet their dates, “Get home early” or “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Women are involved in monstrous untruths when they say, “Oh, I…

  • IT’S NO BIG DEAL

    For better or worse, it is my belief, or conviction, that in times past, folk singers were the essayists of the day. There was a time when universal literacy was only a dream among educators. For example, when my ancestors left Ireland during the Famine which started in 1845, they were farmers who did not…

  • BITS & PIECES: GROWING OLDER IS OFTEN NOT MUCH FUN

    A couple of weeks ago, my car was heading westward on a cold, bleak December afternoon when the sun was low in the sky. There was almost no way to block out the sun and still see to drive. The thought occurred to me that driving like this is no fun. And growing older is…

  • AR-THUR-I-TIS

    What passes for a brain in my head has not been wired for introspective examination. If introspection has to do with examining one’s own mind or its contents reflectively, I am here to tell you, that’s not how my mind works. Professors and hand wringers who write op-ed pieces in newspapers and publish articles in…

  • THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN ON LONG HILL DRIVE | STROKES AND THEIR AFTER EFFECTS

    In December, 1987 it was necessary to perform a coronary artery bypass graft involving four vessels on the author of this essay. The surgery was performed at New York Presbyterian Hospital and was accomplished by a mixed Jewish and Irish team followed by recovery where I was attended to by some of New York’s finest…

  • ON MORTALITY

    Two events in the last week led me to think a little about mortality. The first event has to do with old Shannon, our great cat. Shannon wandered out late in the night last week and another cat or raccoon beat up on him. As my parents would say in their Elizabethan English, currently he…

  • QUID PRO QUO

    As time sneaks up on us all, there is a question about Mr. Webster’s definition of compromise. He suggests that it is a settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions. Now if it were all that easy, I’d say fine. Let’s raise the children in your faith of Buddhism and…