Ezra's Essays

Category: Autobio

  • GLAUCOMA, CATARACTS AND FONDLING

    My father, the original Ezra, developed a medical condition in his eyes called glaucoma during the early 1930’s when he was about 50 years of age. From everything that can be read and from advice from ophthalmologists, glaucoma typically makes its appearance around the age of 50 years. Five children of my father survived to…

  • 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…

  • FOUR STARS OF DAVID

    BUSH & SHARON – THE HAMHANDED EFFORT TO GET THINGS RIGHT Jerusalem has been on my mind of late because of the bombings and other acts of warfare that have taken place there. At the outset, I must point out that I am not an active partisan in the dispute between the Israeli and Palestine…

  • THE KING WHO STUTTERED

    Over the recent Christmas holidays, my daughter and her legally-wedded husband went to a movie which must have had to do with George VI of England who stuttered. Apparently my daughter was impressed by the film, which my mother would have called a “picture show.” Eva Baker and Frances Licht, who are associated with these…

  • RITA, MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO ROLLAND?

    …And Both of You Ought to Get to Know Frances Day A few essays back, I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes and dictated an essay about the most bitter woman I ever knew in my life. That woman was my boss’s secretary. You may recall that she is the one who told me,…

  • REFLECTIONS ON A LONG WORKING CAREER

    One Sunday morning recently, there was a series of reports about mosque bombings in Iraq. One sect would try to bomb out the other sect. John Warner, the senior senator from Virginia and the head of the Armed Forces Committee in the Senate, got things terribly confused. Warner, who is a mature man, confused sectarian…

  • ANNETTE, MILDRED, OPAL AND ESSIE | A Retrospective on Women

    This is an essay about the unfairness’s that life seems to have reserved for women. In nine years of writing essays, this is the fourth essay on these meaningful inequities. As I set out to write this essay, lines from two songs come to mind. The first is from a traditional folk song called “The…

  • EHRHARDT’S DAUGHTER

    For several days now, I have been thinking about one of my classmates at the Clayton, Missouri public school system. She was the only daughter of the couple who presided over the small restaurant immediately west of the Clayton High School. She dressed plainly, wore no makeup that could be discerned and had little to…

  • 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…

  • WHAT WAS THAT GUY’S NAME?

    In a previous essay, I commented on the effects of aphasia, which is a stroke-induced ailment. As I mentioned in that essay, aphasia is a brain-related injury as opposed to a heart-related injury. People who have strokes often call for the cardiologist but in fact what they need is a neurologist. One of the characteristics…